Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
At 19:08 +0100 8/4/07, James Cridland wrote: On 4/8/07, Gordon Joly mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OpenBSD 1 visit Does that mean the user never came back!!?!??!?! It means that user never came back that month, yes. Possibly they visited on March 31st, and have been visiting every day since! ;) BSD dudes... so fickle. Gordo -- Think Feynman/ http://pobox.com/~gordo/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]/// - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
At 20:36 +0100 6/4/07, James Cridland wrote: I'm coming late to this discussion, as always, but if you're interested, here's the information from http://virginradio.co.ukvirginradio.co.uk (sitewide). Visits by operating system in March 2007 (compared with November 2005) Windows: 96.39% (was 97.45%) Macintosh: 2.87% (was 1.75%) Linux: 0.48% (was 0.55%) Unknown: 0.25% (was 0.21%) SunOS: 0.01% (was 0.03%) FreeBSD: 34 visits OS/2: 5 visits OpenBSD 1 visit We used to use Saga Analytics, like the BBC does, but I found it quite poor and unsuitable for our needs; so we switched to Urchin, and paid for a while before it suddenly became a free service branded Google Analytics. Suits my budget line! Two interesting headline figures: our Linux share seems similar, if slightly larger, than the BBC's but it doesn't appear to be growing; and there has been a clear rise in users of the Macintosh platform over the past year. Points to note: Virgin Radio's website is designed without any Windows-specific stuff, and works perfectly with Ubuntu (including our live audio which defaults, on that platform, to a Flash-based MP3 player); Google Analytics will only measure JavaScript-enabled browsers (Ubuntu, at least, has JavaScript switched on by default just like every other system); and naturally GA will only measure systems that aren't lying about who they are (one reason why Opera has done badly in internet stats, to my understanding). Hope this is intersting to everyone. Keep up the good work chaps. -- http://james.cridland.net/http://james.cridland.net/ OpenBSD 1 visit Does that mean the user never came back!!?!??!?! Gordo -- Think Feynman/ http://pobox.com/~gordo/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]/// - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 4/8/07, Gordon Joly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OpenBSD 1 visit Does that mean the user never came back!!?!??!?! It means that user never came back that month, yes. Possibly they visited on March 31st, and have been visiting every day since! ;) -- http://james.cridland.net/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
I'm coming late to this discussion, as always, but if you're interested, here's the information from virginradio.co.uk (sitewide). Visits by operating system in March 2007 (compared with November 2005) Windows: 96.39% (was 97.45%) Macintosh: 2.87% (was 1.75%) Linux: 0.48% (was 0.55%) Unknown: 0.25% (was 0.21%) SunOS: 0.01% (was 0.03%) FreeBSD: 34 visits OS/2: 5 visits OpenBSD 1 visit We used to use Saga Analytics, like the BBC does, but I found it quite poor and unsuitable for our needs; so we switched to Urchin, and paid for a while before it suddenly became a free service branded Google Analytics. Suits my budget line! Two interesting headline figures: our Linux share seems similar, if slightly larger, than the BBC's but it doesn't appear to be growing; and there has been a clear rise in users of the Macintosh platform over the past year. Points to note: Virgin Radio's website is designed without any Windows-specific stuff, and works perfectly with Ubuntu (including our live audio which defaults, on that platform, to a Flash-based MP3 player); Google Analytics will only measure JavaScript-enabled browsers (Ubuntu, at least, has JavaScript switched on by default just like every other system); and naturally GA will only measure systems that aren't lying about who they are (one reason why Opera has done badly in internet stats, to my understanding). Hope this is intersting to everyone. Keep up the good work chaps. -- http://james.cridland.net/
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Peter Bowyer Sent: 31 March 2007 19:38 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Browser Stats On 31/03/07, vijay chopra [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 31/03/07, Peter Bowyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 31/03/07, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Then maybe there is something to your conspiracy theory. Seem as the BBC's stats disagree with the BBC news articles. Something is not quite right wouldn't you agree? Either: 1. Browser stats are inaccurate 2. BBC news article is wrong 3. The BBC is attracting less of the Linux users to it's site (something that should be looked at seriously as this could be an indication the BBC is interfering with commercial markets). Pick one. (or add another). 4. Only you care enough to waste time with this argument? 5. I like using redundant and grammatically incorrect question marks? You can always tell when a discussion has come to its logical end - someone resorts to criticising spelling or grammar. Yeah, it's like comparing someone or something to Hitler or the Nazi's (as in Hitler was a vegetarian)... It's certainly doesn't work as an argument against misrepresenting statistics, but as they only person I know who did double-maths-with-statistics for A-level, I guess I am uniquely injured! plonk -- Peter Bowyer Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.23/740 - Release Date: 30/03/2007 13:15 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.24/742 - Release Date: 01/04/2007 20:49 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
It's certainly doesn't work as an argument against misrepresenting statistics, but as they only person I know who did double-maths-with-statistics for A-level, I guess I am uniquely injured! It takes a certain kind of sadist to do that. It takes another to then take it to university level... On the other hand, at university, we got to use R. With for those that don't know, is a bit like S. http://www.r-project.org/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
Return Receipt Your RE: [backstage] Browser Stats document: wasAndré Berthold/IN/BA/SWR/DE received by: at:02.04.2007 14:50:07 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 30/03/07, Richard Lockwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The next round number above 0.4% is 0.5%. Yes, but I was stating what I would have expected the value to be, not stating the value presented with some rounding. On a sample of visitors to BBC home page - an inflation of over 1000% (as you are suggesting now - 0.4% to 5%) is, frankly, unlikely. Odd then that an official BBC news article claims that the value is closer to 6% isn't it? Quote: However, analysts believe that approximately 6% of computers users run Linux Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6506027.stm?ls (Incidentally Thursday's most popular story) If you'd argued that Linux use was more likely to be 0.5% than 0.4% you'd: a) Possibly have a point b) Have been wasting everyone's time. I am (or was) arguing that it was likely to be closer to the 5% mark than the 0.4% mark (approximately one order of magnitude out). However, in your previous posts, you state that as the BBC stats suggest that Linux use is only 0.4% Indeed, what do you think they suggest? , they are obviously wrong due to a conspiracy, and that Linux use is, in 'fact' (with no evidence), over 1000% higher than that. I don't _remember_ using the word conspiracy. The chances of them being completely accurate is extremely remote. Hitting such a small target (the true value) without taking account of inaccuracies would be more to do with luck than actual statistics. a 1000% difference isn't unrealistic considering we are dealing with the low end of the percentages. And the fact one of the things that was not accounted for is the traffic generated by spam robots. In email traffic spammers contribute to 90% (rounded down figure from the Guardian) of the traffic. I.e. Only 1 in 10 messages are genuine. Why are you assuming that they would not be generating similar traffic over HTTP? In fact it would make sense for it to be higher. (Harder to filter out hacked home boxes over HTTP than email, no dynamic IP should ever be passing on mail, in HTTP you would expect connections from dynamic addresses). Possible inaccuracies do not cover that kind of imagined error margin. Then maybe there is something to your conspiracy theory. Seem as the BBC's stats disagree with the BBC news articles. Something is not quite right wouldn't you agree? Either: 1. Browser stats are inaccurate 2. BBC news article is wrong 3. The BBC is attracting less of the Linux users to it's site (something that should be looked at seriously as this could be an indication the BBC is interfering with commercial markets). Pick one. (or add another). Andy -- First they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you then you win. - Mohandas Gandhi - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 31/03/07, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Then maybe there is something to your conspiracy theory. Seem as the BBC's stats disagree with the BBC news articles. Something is not quite right wouldn't you agree? Either: 1. Browser stats are inaccurate 2. BBC news article is wrong 3. The BBC is attracting less of the Linux users to it's site (something that should be looked at seriously as this could be an indication the BBC is interfering with commercial markets). Pick one. (or add another). 4. Only you care enough to waste time with this argument? -- Peter Bowyer Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 31/03/07, Peter Bowyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 31/03/07, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Then maybe there is something to your conspiracy theory. Seem as the BBC's stats disagree with the BBC news articles. Something is not quite right wouldn't you agree? Either: 1. Browser stats are inaccurate 2. BBC news article is wrong 3. The BBC is attracting less of the Linux users to it's site (something that should be looked at seriously as this could be an indication the BBC is interfering with commercial markets). Pick one. (or add another). 4. Only you care enough to waste time with this argument? 5. I like using redundant and grammatically incorrect question marks?
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 31/03/07, vijay chopra [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 31/03/07, Peter Bowyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 31/03/07, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Then maybe there is something to your conspiracy theory. Seem as the BBC's stats disagree with the BBC news articles. Something is not quite right wouldn't you agree? Either: 1. Browser stats are inaccurate 2. BBC news article is wrong 3. The BBC is attracting less of the Linux users to it's site (something that should be looked at seriously as this could be an indication the BBC is interfering with commercial markets). Pick one. (or add another). 4. Only you care enough to waste time with this argument? 5. I like using redundant and grammatically incorrect question marks? You can always tell when a discussion has come to its logical end - someone resorts to criticising spelling or grammar. plonk -- Peter Bowyer Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
Andy wrote: I can see how it got Netscape, FireFox is derived from the Netscape code base, but how it got from the word Linux into the word Mac I don't know. And this was for a user agent that was stating it's OS as Linux. Simple - Not Windows probably means Mac OS. In a tiny amount of cases it means Linux, or DOS or OS/2 etc, but even this is a tiny percentage compared to Mac OS, and anyone using such an OS is likely to be tech minded. -- From the North, this is Kirk - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
I think that it depends on what your demographic is. If you are talking about people who barely know how to switch on a computer, then you are going to get windows users. For people who actually use a computer for what it is intended, then, for instance in the scientific community, 50% of people use Macs because of the UNIX base, then 30% are Linux users and the rest use Windows. Cheers, Matt Thank you to those who donated to my rowing challenge. We managed to raise over £3000 ($6000) for Teesside Hospice. England expects that every man will do his duty - Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson, 21st October 1805 Matthew A. C. Lamont [EMAIL PROTECTED] WNSL - West, Room 309phone: (203) 432 5834 Physics Department, Yale University fax: (203) 432 8926 P.O. Box 208124 272 Whitney Avenue New Haven, CT 06520-8124, USA - On 30 Mar 2007, at 08:11, Kirk Northrop wrote: Andy wrote: I can see how it got Netscape, FireFox is derived from the Netscape code base, but how it got from the word Linux into the word Mac I don't know. And this was for a user agent that was stating it's OS as Linux. Simple - Not Windows probably means Mac OS. In a tiny amount of cases it means Linux, or DOS or OS/2 etc, but even this is a tiny percentage compared to Mac OS, and anyone using such an OS is likely to be tech minded. -- From the North, this is Kirk - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/ mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail- archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
For people who actually use a computer for what it is intended, Wow. That's quite some statement. I'd compose an elegant riposte if I didn't have to go off to IKEA post haste, because I've just noticed on their website that the chair and desk I want to set up my desktop PC is in, and I haven't played Warcraft in a month because the ergonomics on the sofa are all wrong. It means I'll be able to stream my music to the living room too, finally, and get round to editing that video of my mum making omlette and pop it up on youtube. :) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
At 10:00 +0100 30/3/07, Jason Cartwright wrote: bbc.co.uk uses ActiveX Where? Hm, my mistake it was on a BBC site but not under the bbc.co.uk domain, I could look for other examples on bbc.co.uk but for now this will suffice. http://www.bbcworld.com/content/clickonline_archive_PC.asp?pageid=666co _pageid=1 This site now appears to be dead. bbcworld.com is run by BBC Worldwide, a commerical organisation with entirely different aims to the public service publishers of bbc.co.uk. J BBC Worldwide is wholly owned subsidiary of the BBC (a corporation established by Charter). I believe that there is a complex set of relationships, and that these are laid down for all BBC staff to follow. For example, the BBC can advertise BBC Worldwide merchandise, but not beyond a certain level. Gordo -- Think Feynman/ http://pobox.com/~gordo/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]/// - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 29/03/07, Richard Lockwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Even 10% is significantly higher than 0.4% I was using 10% as an upper limit. If the true value was over 5% I would not be surprised. The next round number above 5% is 10% and over that would surprise me. No - this is not evidence. You're coming up with a series of hypotheses to fit your scenario - that a significant proportion of people use Linux as a desktop OS. This is the same arguing technique that proponants of Intelligent Design use. You can't prove otherwise, so it must be true. Maybe I should have phrased what a said differently? Will you allow me to do so now? There are possible inaccuracies associated with this metric for judging Operating System usage. This may cause the number to be inaccurate so can not be relied on as 'proof' as that would require an element of certainty. It can been seen as to suggest certain things however. There was a very interesting (and to my mind, fairly written) article in The Register yesterday about installing Linux: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/28/desktop_linux/ (cue Linux-heads bleating about how he should've used a different distro Thanks for the cue ;) PCLinuxOS is experimental, see it's download page. Experimental technology is not going to work properly. Please use a more stable system if you want to actually have any kind of meaningful comparison. In summary, you should not claim statistics as proof of something unless it can be shown that all possible failings in the metric where accounted for. You have not shown this. It suggests that the usage of Linux is very low at the time, it does not _prove_ it categorically. And I don't need to prove it to be wrong to prove it doesn't prove something. Remember not being able to prove A does not prove not A The truth is probably that know one knows for certain what the usage of any operating system is. Incidentally the BBC itself had a story that suggested a figure of 6%. (lost the link, it was about Dell planing to offer Linux boxes, was on the front page of the technology news, I will find the link if you want it) Oh and before I go you used the term significant portion, how many would be considered significant? Andy -- First they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you then you win. - Mohandas Gandhi - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 3/30/07, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 29/03/07, Richard Lockwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Even 10% is significantly higher than 0.4% I was using 10% as an upper limit. If the true value was over 5% I would not be surprised. The next round number above 5% is 10% and over that would surprise me. The next round number above 0.4% is 0.5%. On a sample of visitors to BBC home page - an inflation of over 1000% (as you are suggesting now - 0.4% to 5%) is, frankly, unlikely. If you'd argued that Linux use was more likely to be 0.5% than 0.4% you'd: a) Possibly have a point b) Have been wasting everyone's time. No - this is not evidence. You're coming up with a series of hypotheses to fit your scenario - that a significant proportion of people use Linux as a desktop OS. This is the same arguing technique that proponants of Intelligent Design use. You can't prove otherwise, so it must be true. Maybe I should have phrased what a said differently? Will you allow me to do so now? There are possible inaccuracies associated with this metric for judging Operating System usage. This may cause the number to be inaccurate so can not be relied on as 'proof' as that would require an element of certainty. It can been seen as to suggest certain things however. Certainly, and you are of course quite right. However, in your previous posts, you state that as the BBC stats suggest that Linux use is only 0.4%, they are obviously wrong due to a conspiracy, and that Linux use is, in 'fact' (with no evidence), over 1000% higher than that. Possible inaccuracies do not cover that kind of imagined error margin. You're going to need to backpedal a lot more than that to get out of this one. Rich. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
Oh and before I go you used the term significant portion, how many would be considered significant? No, I didn't. I used the phrase significant PROportion. I believe Significant Portion is either a pub rock band from Kings Lynn, or some kind of euphemism. Less frivolously, you stated that you believe that 10% of people visiting the BBC website would be using Linux (later back-pedalled to maybe 5%). I'd say for an operating system, yes, 5% is significant*. Rich. * I'm not using the word significant in its statistical sense - this is my opinion. My A level was Further Maths with Mechanics - not stats. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
Matthew Lamont wrote: I think that it depends on what your demographic is. If you are talking about people who barely know how to switch on a computer, then you are going to get windows users. For people who actually use a computer for what it is intended, then, for instance in the scientific community, 50% of people use Macs because of the UNIX base, then 30% are Linux users and the rest use Windows. Oh yes, of course. But over the wider population it's all Windows and occasional Macs. -- From the North, this is Kirk - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
I'd take issue with that sweeping stateent - pretty much all of my student friends have laptops, some have both. I live in a house with five other people - in total there's three mac users and three windows users. Me, I'm a Windows expert, one of my housemates is a Mac expert. The other three are more 'users' than 'power users' - but whenever there's a problem with one of the Macs, they usually end up coming to me for help (and I can usually sort the problem out even though I hate macs and osx). The mac users can't make head nor tail of how the OS works - they just don't understand it. It's like watching my mum use a computer - she uses it by rote, she doesn't understand 'how' it works or how it achieves what it does. Inded, MANY of the more technically-minded people on my course either use Windows or ave both a pc and a mac - and I only use a mac because I have to (music tech and production course, we do lotsof work with DAWs and protools et al, and that's always traditionally been a mac-led industry). I often find that people I speak to who have PCs understand how they work better than the people with Macs - they're much more newbie users. Of course, there's many MANY expert Mac users out there, but to me it seems that age range of people I hang around with seem to buy macs much more for the style impact, because they look pretty, than for what they offer technology-wise. It depresses me, we need some kind of intelligence test which will bar a machine from starting up if they get it wrong, that'll weed out the people who are clueless users fast enough (and solve problems like phishing and botnets - which would then indirectly lessen the problem of spam - imho, because only people who don't know how to secure their machines fall prey to those kinds of social engineering). /elitist/rant Personaly I always prefer to remain platform-agnostic, and it really annoys me when I have to stay locked in to any one platform, whether it's windows OR mac. After using Windows for uch a long time, there are many small things which REALLY annoy me about using OSX - to the point where I can consciously feel my productivity worsening as a result. That hacks me off. -Original Message- From: Matthew Lamont [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 30 March 2007 15:03 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Browser Stats I think that it depends on what your demographic is. If you are talking about people who barely know how to switch on a computer, then you are going to get windows users. For people who actually use a computer for what it is intended, then, for instance in the scientific community, 50% of people use Macs because of the UNIX base, then 30% are Linux users and the rest use Windows. Cheers, Matt Thank you to those who donated to my rowing challenge. We managed to raise over £3000 ($6000) for Teesside Hospice. England expects that every man will do his duty - Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson, 21st October 1805 -- -- Matthew A. C. Lamont [EMAIL PROTECTED] WNSL - West, Room 309phone: (203) 432 5834 Physics Department, Yale University fax: (203) 432 8926 P.O. Box 208124 272 Whitney Avenue New Haven, CT 06520-8124, USA -- -- - On 30 Mar 2007, at 08:11, Kirk Northrop wrote: Andy wrote: I can see how it got Netscape, FireFox is derived from the Netscape code base, but how it got from the word Linux into the word Mac I don't know. And this was for a user agent that was stating it's OS as Linux. Simple - Not Windows probably means Mac OS. In a tiny amount of cases it means Linux, or DOS or OS/2 etc, but even this is a tiny percentage compared to Mac OS, and anyone using such an OS is likely to be tech minded. -- From the North, this is Kirk - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/ mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail- archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
Frank Wales said: Admittedly, I've only met Jem a few times, but I feel I ought to defend his honour here by pointing out that I don't believe he's the misleading type. I apologise, I did not mean it as a personal attack. Sorry. I can't recall the last time I was blocked from content on bbc.co.uk. I can, it was when a page required me to have ActiveX to view a video. And yes I did inform the BBC about it, they ignored it until I sent on official complaint. There official response to this complaint was download ActiveX and shut up. Richard Lockwood said: Andy - ordinary people do not generally use Linux as a desktop OS. Is there such a thing as an ordinary person? Any way my point was that the true figure may not be quite as low as stated. I did not say it would be greatly higher, certainly not higher than WindowsXP (by a long way). I would be quite surprised if it was more than 10%. Richard also said: No - you really dislike statistics when they prove something that doesn't meet with your approval. Well that statement that statistics prove anything is inaccurate. Statistics can be flawed, especially depending on how they where conducted. Here, for example, you find a figure you wish was a lot higher, and then come up with a load of reasons why it might be inaccurate, without providing any evidence for a single one of them. I would have thought they where all self explanatory, evidently not. Many studies have shown that Junk email makes up 90% of all email. Why are you assuming that the same people are not using websites to launch attacks? Have you never heard the phrase comment spam, have you never seen a captcha, they're not there to look good. Stick your email address on a public website, wait a bit and see if you get spam. How do you think they knew that was your email address? Because robots do trawl the Internet looking for email addresses. The BBC site is more likely to be hit by these as lots of places link there so it's easy to find. Jason Cartwright wrote: but add that these numbers are probably generated by some pretty sophisticated 3rd part software that the BBC employs. But we don't know that do we? Have you ever seem how bad user agent sniffing is? I was using a PC running FireFox on Linux that transmitted the word Linux in its user agent. I was told by a major website that I was running Netscape on Mac OS. I can see how it got Netscape, FireFox is derived from the Netscape code base, but how it got from the word Linux into the word Mac I don't know. And this was for a user agent that was stating it's OS as Linux. If major Internet companies have problems with recognizing the word Linux I doubt they could recognize the different distributions either. Jason Cartwright wrote: bbc.co.uk uses ActiveX Where? Hm, my mistake it was on a BBC site but not under the bbc.co.uk domain, I could look for other examples on bbc.co.uk but for now this will suffice. http://www.bbcworld.com/content/clickonline_archive_PC.asp?pageid=666co_pageid=1 This site now appears to be dead. On 28/03/07, Gordon Joly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cam we assume that global stats (of random websites) show a higher number of Linux web clients that this, such as wget and telnet www.example.com 80? What has telnet got to do with this? Seems analysis is via User Agent header it would require the telnet user to actually add a user agent string by hand, I have never bothered with that as it's extra typing and isn't required for a valid request. (Admittedly I rarely use telnet for http connections, the last time was when a FireFox claimed a site was redirecting badly, turned out the server was 302ing to itself). Also telnet is not only a Linux client. Telnet exists on Windows, it's just most Windows users haven't figured out its there. Andy -- First they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you then you win. - Mohandas Gandhi - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
Richard Lockwood said: Andy - ordinary people do not generally use Linux as a desktop OS. Is there such a thing as an ordinary person? Any way my point was that the true figure may not be quite as low as stated. I did not say it would be greatly higher, certainly not higher than WindowsXP (by a long way). I would be quite surprised if it was more than 10%. Even 10% is significantly higher than 0.4% Richard also said: Here, for example, you find a figure you wish was a lot higher, and then come up with a load of reasons why it might be inaccurate, without providing any evidence for a single one of them. I would have thought they where all self explanatory, evidently not. Many studies have shown that Junk email makes up 90% of all email. Why are you assuming that the same people are not using websites to launch attacks? Have you never heard the phrase comment spam, have you never seen a captcha, they're not there to look good. Stick your email address on a public website, wait a bit and see if you get spam. How do you think they knew that was your email address? Because robots do trawl the Internet looking for email addresses. The BBC site is more likely to be hit by these as lots of places link there so it's easy to find. No - this is not evidence. You're coming up with a series of hypotheses to fit your scenario - that a significant proportion of people use Linux as a desktop OS. This is the same arguing technique that proponants of Intelligent Design use. You can't prove otherwise, so it must be true. Jason Cartwright wrote: but add that these numbers are probably generated by some pretty sophisticated 3rd part software that the BBC employs. But we don't know that do we? Have you ever seem how bad user agent sniffing is? I was using a PC running FireFox on Linux that transmitted the word Linux in its user agent. I was told by a major website that I was running Netscape on Mac OS. Again - just because the BBC's technique *might* be inaccurate doesn't mean it *is* inaccurate. Likewise, because you want to believe that Linux is massively popular doesn't mean it is. There was a very interesting (and to my mind, fairly written) article in The Register yesterday about installing Linux: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/28/desktop_linux/ (cue Linux-heads bleating about how he should've used a different distro, or how the author must be brain dead not to be able to get it right first time...) I care not one way or the other, but it goes to show why Linux still isn't ready for everyman to go installing it on his expensive PC when it came with a perfectly-good-operating-system-why-would-I-want-to-change-it-anyway. Rich. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
At 14:17 +0100 29/3/07, Brian Butterworth wrote: To summarise: Linux is truly intelligent design but no-one uses it as a desktop OS, or if they do they are too ashamed to connect to the internet and if they do they fake it as a Windows machine? Brian Butterworth Sorry, off topic. Gordo -- Think Feynman/ http://pobox.com/~gordo/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]/// - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 3/27/07, Andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 26/03/07, Jeremy Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 0.4% of users at the time used a Linux operating system ;) That's not entirely true is it? Please do not try to mislead people. What is more likely is: 0.4% of users WHERE DETECTED AS using a Linux operating system AT THE TIME THEY VISITED THE BBC SITE. This number can be wrong for a multitude of reasons. 1) the BBC stats are biased, the site is target at Windows users and on certain pages blocks users of other OSes (bbc.co.uk uses ActiveX for instance) * Snips most of foaming-at-the-mouth-conspiricy-theory-style-rant trying to claim that Linux distros account for a vast percentage of desktop users and the BBC is complicit in covering this up. * Andy - ordinary people do not generally use Linux as a desktop OS. I'm not going to argue the toss about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's fact. I really do dislike statistics, especially when people try to claim that they prove something without accounting for the method of gathering. No - you really dislike statistics when they prove something that doesn't meet with your approval. Here, for example, you find a figure you wish was a lot higher, and then come up with a load of reasons why it might be inaccurate, without providing any evidence for a single one of them. I'm not going to say that they're all *wrong*, but on such an large size sample, none of your possible reasons is going to account for a significant difference. Now, put the gun down, and step away... Cheers, Rich. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
I'll ignore your rant about the stats - but add that these numbers are probably generated by some pretty sophisticated 3rd part software that the BBC employs. I highly doubt they just look for Linux in the UA string. I'm sure Jem will be replying. the site is target at Windows users Completely incorrect. We target certain browsers when testing, sure, but why would we ever target the OS? bbc.co.uk uses ActiveX Where? On the subject of whether to support IE 5, is it supported by Microsoft or has it been end of lifed? If it's been end of lifed then maybe you don't need to support it. I'd argue that it doesn't matter if MS support it or not. Choices of browser support should be based on if the users are using it. Why do you need to 'support' specific browsers anyway? This is what standards are ofr, I don't need to check the compatibility with every piece of software on every switch between here and my destination node, they are using a standard I just make sure I follow that standard. Why should the HTML content be any different? I suspect you already know this, and perhaps your question is rhetorical. I'll answer it anyhow :-). Some browsers had different interpretations of the standards and render pages radically differently from each other. Testing to the standards is pointless, and will result in thousands of emails asking why IE, and it's box model, has messed up the pretty design. J -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Sent: 27 March 2007 17:19 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Browser Stats On 26/03/07, Jeremy Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 0.4% of users at the time used a Linux operating system ;) That's not entirely true is it? Please do not try to mislead people. What is more likely is: 0.4% of users WHERE DETECTED AS using a Linux operating system AT THE TIME THEY VISITED THE BBC SITE. This number can be wrong for a multitude of reasons. 1) the BBC stats are biased, the site is target at Windows users and on certain pages blocks users of other OSes (bbc.co.uk uses ActiveX for instance) 2) Detection software may not have been as tuned to recognize a Linux OS, after all many distros don't call them selves 'Linux', it may not be in the user agent string. (simply looking for the word Linux is not good enough). 3) A Linux user may have been misreporting the Operating System (commonly used to cater for sites that do user agent sniffing badly, also used to blend in with the crowd for anonymity). 4) Someone may have a dual boot (or triple or more), and may only be using Windows to view bbc.co.ku, possibly due to being locked out by previously mentioned technological practices of the BBC. 5) Some 'users' may not be real people, they may be robots spoofing there user agent. 90% of email is spam. How have you accounted for web robots browsing your site looking for email addresses or trying to post spam comments (they would not hit robots.txt or say robot in the user agent, that would give them away)? I am thinking most spam bots would impersonate IE on Windows as it probably has the highest market share so much harder o filter. (by how high we are unsure). Additionally you could argue you would get the less knowledgable users in this sampling, I rarely hit the BBC home page, why bother? I know where I want to go and I get the news feeds in a handy RSS so I probably don't hit news.bbc.co.uk's homepage either. I have the pages I need on bookmarks, (Favourites for you IE users). This is the great thing about statistics people like you claim they show something and try to cover up the failings of how the sampling was done. It shows only as much as it records. The number of recognized User Agent strings for hits on the BBC website. (Quick question, is this per IP or per page hit? page hit would be bad as it would allow robots to skew the results badly as they would hit far more pages). I really do dislike statistics, especially when people try to claim that they prove something without accounting for the method of gathering. And now a quote: There are three kinds of commonly recognised untruths: Lies, damn lies and statistics. - Mark Twain This quote from Mark Twain is accurate; statistics are often used to lie to the public because most people do not understand how statistics work. And this quote is from where you ask? Why it is from the BBC of course! (well I had to use the BBC quote didn't I? especially it is the first result on Google for: lies damn lies statistics) Maybe you should improve your stats? 1.Group each unique header together and have a Skilled Human with knowledge of all operating system classify them according to OS. 2. Make each visitor pass a Turing Test prior to using there User Agent. 3. Verify details of OS using other methods, i.e. Javascript could check, or use OS fingerprinting (hopefully it wouldn't hit NAT routers, otherwise you'd probably get the OS
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
1) the BBC stats are biased, the site is target at Windows users and on certain pages blocks users of other OSes That's not my experience of it; my usual browser is Firefox on Gentoo Linux, and I can't recall the last time I was blocked from content on bbc.co.uk. Ubuntu user with FirefoxOpera at home - can't remember the last time I had to spoof for any site. About five years ago I abandoned one bank because they didn't support Linux, but since then I haven't had one problem. And of course, spoofing (or lack of!) is not just a Linux thing :) I do recall in the past browser spoofing to be rather unreliable - one electricity supplier site I used years ago was determined that I had Mozilla despite what I tried to do to persuade it otherwise. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 28/03/07, Jason Cartwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: and will result in thousands of emails asking why IE, and it's box model, has messed up the pretty design. I wish this happened were I work! If only users would blame the IE rendering engine (rather than the site or designers) everything would be right with the world :-) J -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Sent: 27 March 2007 17:19 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Browser Stats On 26/03/07, Jeremy Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 0.4% of users at the time used a Linux operating system ;) That's not entirely true is it? Please do not try to mislead people. What is more likely is: 0.4% of users WHERE DETECTED AS using a Linux operating system AT THE TIME THEY VISITED THE BBC SITE. This number can be wrong for a multitude of reasons. 1) the BBC stats are biased, the site is target at Windows users and on certain pages blocks users of other OSes (bbc.co.uk uses ActiveX for instance) 2) Detection software may not have been as tuned to recognize a Linux OS, after all many distros don't call them selves 'Linux', it may not be in the user agent string. (simply looking for the word Linux is not good enough). 3) A Linux user may have been misreporting the Operating System (commonly used to cater for sites that do user agent sniffing badly, also used to blend in with the crowd for anonymity). 4) Someone may have a dual boot (or triple or more), and may only be using Windows to view bbc.co.ku, possibly due to being locked out by previously mentioned technological practices of the BBC. 5) Some 'users' may not be real people, they may be robots spoofing there user agent. 90% of email is spam. How have you accounted for web robots browsing your site looking for email addresses or trying to post spam comments (they would not hit robots.txt or say robot in the user agent, that would give them away)? I am thinking most spam bots would impersonate IE on Windows as it probably has the highest market share so much harder o filter. (by how high we are unsure). Additionally you could argue you would get the less knowledgable users in this sampling, I rarely hit the BBC home page, why bother? I know where I want to go and I get the news feeds in a handy RSS so I probably don't hit news.bbc.co.uk's homepage either. I have the pages I need on bookmarks, (Favourites for you IE users). This is the great thing about statistics people like you claim they show something and try to cover up the failings of how the sampling was done. It shows only as much as it records. The number of recognized User Agent strings for hits on the BBC website. (Quick question, is this per IP or per page hit? page hit would be bad as it would allow robots to skew the results badly as they would hit far more pages). I really do dislike statistics, especially when people try to claim that they prove something without accounting for the method of gathering. And now a quote: There are three kinds of commonly recognised untruths: Lies, damn lies and statistics. - Mark Twain This quote from Mark Twain is accurate; statistics are often used to lie to the public because most people do not understand how statistics work. And this quote is from where you ask? Why it is from the BBC of course! (well I had to use the BBC quote didn't I? especially it is the first result on Google for: lies damn lies statistics) Maybe you should improve your stats? 1.Group each unique header together and have a Skilled Human with knowledge of all operating system classify them according to OS. 2. Make each visitor pass a Turing Test prior to using there User Agent. 3. Verify details of OS using other methods, i.e. Javascript could check, or use OS fingerprinting (hopefully it wouldn't hit NAT routers, otherwise you'd probably get the OS of a router,. which although interesting is not what we are looking for is it?). On the subject of whether to support IE 5, is it supported by Microsoft or has it been end of lifed? If it's been end of lifed then maybe you don't need to support it. Why do you need to 'support' specific browsers anyway? This is what standards are ofr, I don't need to check the compatibility with every piece of software on every switch between here and my destination node, they are using a standard I just make sure I follow that standard. Why should the HTML content be any different? The underlying TCP/IP and HTTP system seem to work much more compatibly than all these websites, many of which display poorly if you stray so slightly of the most common browser and settings, does this not show that standards work better? Andy -- First they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you then you win. - Mohandas Gandhi - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
cookies from machines at regular intervals. In some environments, e.g. internet café's or schools, computers will destroy cookies when a person logs off from a session. Many browsers offer options to easily delete cookies. In any case where the BBCUID cookie is deleted then the next time a request is made from that machine or user a new cookie will be issued and will appear as a new user. * Unique user figures should never be added (or subtracted) in case the same BBCUIDs are included in the numbers in the calculation. E.g. you could not add the users of Eastenders to the users of Radio 1 because the total would double count any users that had used both sites. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Sent: 27 March 2007 17:19 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Browser Stats On 26/03/07, Jeremy Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 0.4% of users at the time used a Linux operating system ;) That's not entirely true is it? Please do not try to mislead people. What is more likely is: 0.4% of users WHERE DETECTED AS using a Linux operating system AT THE TIME THEY VISITED THE BBC SITE. This number can be wrong for a multitude of reasons. 1) the BBC stats are biased, the site is target at Windows users and on certain pages blocks users of other OSes (bbc.co.uk uses ActiveX for instance) 2) Detection software may not have been as tuned to recognize a Linux OS, after all many distros don't call them selves 'Linux', it may not be in the user agent string. (simply looking for the word Linux is not good enough). 3) A Linux user may have been misreporting the Operating System (commonly used to cater for sites that do user agent sniffing badly, also used to blend in with the crowd for anonymity). 4) Someone may have a dual boot (or triple or more), and may only be using Windows to view bbc.co.ku, possibly due to being locked out by previously mentioned technological practices of the BBC. 5) Some 'users' may not be real people, they may be robots spoofing there user agent. 90% of email is spam. How have you accounted for web robots browsing your site looking for email addresses or trying to post spam comments (they would not hit robots.txt or say robot in the user agent, that would give them away)? I am thinking most spam bots would impersonate IE on Windows as it probably has the highest market share so much harder o filter. (by how high we are unsure). Additionally you could argue you would get the less knowledgable users in this sampling, I rarely hit the BBC home page, why bother? I know where I want to go and I get the news feeds in a handy RSS so I probably don't hit news.bbc.co.uk's homepage either. I have the pages I need on bookmarks, (Favourites for you IE users). This is the great thing about statistics people like you claim they show something and try to cover up the failings of how the sampling was done. It shows only as much as it records. The number of recognized User Agent strings for hits on the BBC website. (Quick question, is this per IP or per page hit? page hit would be bad as it would allow robots to skew the results badly as they would hit far more pages). I really do dislike statistics, especially when people try to claim that they prove something without accounting for the method of gathering. And now a quote: There are three kinds of commonly recognised untruths: Lies, damn lies and statistics. - Mark Twain This quote from Mark Twain is accurate; statistics are often used to lie to the public because most people do not understand how statistics work. And this quote is from where you ask? Why it is from the BBC of course! (well I had to use the BBC quote didn't I? especially it is the first result on Google for: lies damn lies statistics) Maybe you should improve your stats? 1.Group each unique header together and have a Skilled Human with knowledge of all operating system classify them according to OS. 2. Make each visitor pass a Turing Test prior to using there User Agent. 3. Verify details of OS using other methods, i.e. Javascript could check, or use OS fingerprinting (hopefully it wouldn't hit NAT routers, otherwise you'd probably get the OS of a router,. which although interesting is not what we are looking for is it?). On the subject of whether to support IE 5, is it supported by Microsoft or has it been end of lifed? If it's been end of lifed then maybe you don't need to support it. Why do you need to 'support' specific browsers anyway? This is what standards are ofr, I don't need to check the compatibility with every piece of software on every switch between here and my destination node, they are using a standard I just make sure I follow that standard. Why should the HTML content be any different? The underlying
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
These stats are very interesting (especially BlackBerry 0.43%), and the use of a cookie (with the provisos listed at the bottom of the page) to track 'users' provides a good insight. Is it possible that these stats could be provided automatically, say on a daily basis so it can be used to track the use of browsers and platforms. The BBC, as a public service, would be doing a great service for the rest of the industry to have these stats available as a 'live page', perhaps with some nice graphs and things. Having it a resource would, IMHO, help UK web developers. Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kim Plowright Sent: 28 March 2007 11:04 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Browser Stats If you read Martin Belam (hello Martin!) on the methods he used to derive these figures, you'll note that he's extremely thorough in his data analysis. http://www.currybet.net/articles/user_agents/index.php I think you should read a little levity in to Jem's use of a grin after the Linux comment! Below are the stats, taken from our Sage Analyst system (http://www.sagemetrics.com/content/sageanalyst/overview.html - about the system, currently very slow!), from the 24th of march - the most recent 24h period available. We tend to run a bit late, as, IIRC, the daily server logs run to around 5gigabytes of data, which needs to be warehoused and processed. These figures are for all visits, to all pages of the whole of bbc.co.uk, not just the homepage. Automated requests (from bots, spiders etc) are stripped from our data; as far as I know we comply with JICWEBS and IFABC standards that require this. This is done using browser string filtering, against an industry standard set of strings supplied by IFABC. I provide these OS breakdowns both as % of Total Page Views, and % of users. Unique users are deduplicated, based on Cookie data - so you should caveat that with the usual cookie churn stuff*. However, as we're looking at percentage shares in a very large (6.5million+) user sample, I think it should be considered a good indicative slice. By Page Impression Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Windows 88.37 Macintosh 4.51 Liberate 3.32 Nokia 1.09 SonyEricsson 0.67 BlackBerry0.43 Motorola 0.36 Samsung 0.23 LG0.17 NEC 0.08 Orange0.04 Sagem 0.03 O20.02 TMobile 0.01 Sharp 0.01 Linux 0.01 DOS 0 Panasonic 0 BenQ 0 Sprint0 ZTE 0 Philips 0 Unix 0 VK0 Siemens 0 Toshiba 0 Sun 0 Sanyo 0 IRIX 0 OSF1 0 Unidentified 0.65 By User Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Users Windows 85.39 Macintosh 6.51 Nokia 2.26 Liberate 1.66 SonyEricsson 1.5 Motorola 0.84 BlackBerry0.76 Samsung 0.55 LG0.18 Sagem 0.08 Orange0.06 Sharp 0.04 O20.03 TMobile 0.03 Linux 0.02 Panasonic 0.02 NEC 0.02 BenQ 0.01 DOS 0.01 Philips 0.01 ZTE 0 Sprint0 Toshiba 0 VK0 Unix 0 Siemens 0 Sanyo 0 Sun 0 IRIX 0 OSF1 0 - - - Breakdown of WINDOWS operating systems Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Windows XP53.71 Windows XP SP231.96 Windows 2000 6.94 Windows NT2.65 Windows Vista 2.25 Windows 981.23 Windows ME0.72 Windows CE0.35 Windows 320.13 Windows 950.06 Windows 640.01 Windows 310 Breakdown of MAC os'es Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Macintosh X 97.21 Macintosh PowerPC 2.53 Macintosh 0.26 Macintosh OS8 0 Breakdown of LINUX oses Operating Systems for Mar 24, 2007 for Entire Site from Entire World OS Type % of Total Page Views Linux 24 43.17 Linux 22 36.4 Linux 20 20.43 *From our guidance notes, internally: Figures for unique users are based on the BBCUID. This is a unique identifier - known as a cookie - which is sent to a user's computer the first time they request a page from a BBC web site. Provided the cookie is accepted by the requesting computer then it will be saved to that computer's memory and will be returned to the web server with all subsequent requests. The returned cookies are included in the log records for each request and because each cookie is unique it is then possible to track the activity of each user across time. The total number of unique users is really a count
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
to a combination of these. If 2 people share the same machine and the same user login they would share the same BBCUID and appear as the same person. Equally if the same person were to use two different machines then they would be counted as two users. * Some browsers do not accept cookies. When this happens a new cookie will be sent out for every request that browser makes. If we counted these cookies as users it would push the number of users up. So we don't count cookies we send out, only those that we get back. * There may be a number of situations where cookies, including the BBCUID, will get deleted from a computer. Some companies wipe cookies from machines at regular intervals. In some environments, e.g. internet café's or schools, computers will destroy cookies when a person logs off from a session. Many browsers offer options to easily delete cookies. In any case where the BBCUID cookie is deleted then the next time a request is made from that machine or user a new cookie will be issued and will appear as a new user. * Unique user figures should never be added (or subtracted) in case the same BBCUIDs are included in the numbers in the calculation. E.g. you could not add the users of Eastenders to the users of Radio 1 because the total would double count any users that had used both sites. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Sent: 27 March 2007 17:19 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Browser Stats On 26/03/07, Jeremy Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 0.4% of users at the time used a Linux operating system ;) That's not entirely true is it? Please do not try to mislead people. What is more likely is: 0.4% of users WHERE DETECTED AS using a Linux operating system AT THE TIME THEY VISITED THE BBC SITE. This number can be wrong for a multitude of reasons. 1) the BBC stats are biased, the site is target at Windows users and on certain pages blocks users of other OSes (bbc.co.uk uses ActiveX for instance) 2) Detection software may not have been as tuned to recognize a Linux OS, after all many distros don't call them selves 'Linux', it may not be in the user agent string. (simply looking for the word Linux is not good enough). 3) A Linux user may have been misreporting the Operating System (commonly used to cater for sites that do user agent sniffing badly, also used to blend in with the crowd for anonymity). 4) Someone may have a dual boot (or triple or more), and may only be using Windows to view bbc.co.ku, possibly due to being locked out by previously mentioned technological practices of the BBC. 5) Some 'users' may not be real people, they may be robots spoofing there user agent. 90% of email is spam. How have you accounted for web robots browsing your site looking for email addresses or trying to post spam comments (they would not hit robots.txt or say robot in the user agent, that would give them away)? I am thinking most spam bots would impersonate IE on Windows as it probably has the highest market share so much harder o filter. (by how high we are unsure). Additionally you could argue you would get the less knowledgable users in this sampling, I rarely hit the BBC home page, why bother? I know where I want to go and I get the news feeds in a handy RSS so I probably don't hit news.bbc.co.uk's homepage either. I have the pages I need on bookmarks, (Favourites for you IE users). This is the great thing about statistics people like you claim they show something and try to cover up the failings of how the sampling was done. It shows only as much as it records. The number of recognized User Agent strings for hits on the BBC website. (Quick question, is this per IP or per page hit? page hit would be bad as it would allow robots to skew the results badly as they would hit far more pages). I really do dislike statistics, especially when people try to claim that they prove something without accounting for the method of gathering. And now a quote: There are three kinds of commonly recognised untruths: Lies, damn lies and statistics. - Mark Twain This quote from Mark Twain is accurate; statistics are often used to lie to the public because most people do not understand how statistics work. And this quote is from where you ask? Why it is from the BBC of course! (well I had to use the BBC quote didn't I? especially it is the first result on Google for: lies damn lies statistics) Maybe you should improve your stats? 1.Group each unique header together and have a Skilled Human with knowledge of all operating system classify them according to OS. 2. Make each visitor pass a Turing Test prior to using there User Agent. 3. Verify details of OS using other methods, i.e. Javascript could check, or use OS fingerprinting (hopefully it wouldn't hit NAT routers, otherwise you'd probably get the OS of a router
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 28/03/07, Jason Cartwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I suspect you already know this, and perhaps your question is rhetorical. I'll answer it anyhow :-). Some browsers had different interpretations of the standards and render pages radically differently from each other. Testing to the standards is pointless, and will result in thousands of emails asking why IE, and it's box model, has messed up the pretty design. J Actually as far as I can tell, everyone execpt MSIE is aiming to meet the ACID 2 test: http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/ Admittedly firefox isn't there yet, but has it as a milestone; but IIRC Opera, Safri and Konquer all meet the test. So it's no some browsers it's a browser. Unfortunately, that browser just happens to be the most widely used one, so it has to be supported.
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
They are working on it... http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242.aspx (last 3 paras). Molly (a visitor around here every so often [1]) is on the case from the inside... http://weblogs.asp.net/molly/ J [1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasoncartwright/tags/molly/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasoncartwright/377686574/ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of vijay chopra Sent: 28 March 2007 12:35 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Browser Stats On 28/03/07, Jason Cartwright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I suspect you already know this, and perhaps your question is rhetorical. I'll answer it anyhow :-). Some browsers had different interpretations of the standards and render pages radically differently from each other. Testing to the standards is pointless, and will result in thousands of emails asking why IE, and it's box model, has messed up the pretty design. J Actually as far as I can tell, everyone execpt MSIE is aiming to meet the ACID 2 test: http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/ Admittedly firefox isn't there yet, but has it as a milestone; but IIRC Opera, Safri and Konquer all meet the test. So it's no some browsers it's a browser. Unfortunately, that browser just happens to be the most widely used one, so it has to be supported.
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
Is it possible that these stats could be provided automatically, say on a daily basis so it can be used to track the use of browsers and platforms. No. Slightly longer answer - the stats system is problematic, and doesn't provide easy ways to route this kind of thing externally. It's under strain from the ammount of data it has to process already, and it's supported by a hugely overworked bloke called Danny. I could ask him, but he'd give me a look like I'd strangled his puppy. I don't like making Danny sad. I'll try and remember to send browser / OS updates once a month when I prepare (lovingly, by hand, at great personal pain and grief) our internal stats reports. Not really the kind of thing I can divert resource to automating, even to make my life easier, sorry :( - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
What is more likely is: 0.4% of users WHERE DETECTED AS using a Linux operating system AT THE TIME THEY VISITED THE BBC SITE. Cam we assume that global stats (of random websites) show a higher number of Linux web clients that this, such as wget and telnet www.example.com 80? YMMV, Gordo -- Think Feynman/ http://pobox.com/~gordo/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]/// - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
Hey, we just *did* publish it! :) I'll try and remember to send an update out every month or so, when I'm noodling through our stats system. Thank you very much to everyone for sharing this data - it really is very interesting. And I second the request for the BBC to publish this data (just as it is below), which would be a really good guide for what range of browsers the average person uses. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
On 26/03/07, Jeremy Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 0.4% of users at the time used a Linux operating system ;) That's not entirely true is it? Please do not try to mislead people. What is more likely is: 0.4% of users WHERE DETECTED AS using a Linux operating system AT THE TIME THEY VISITED THE BBC SITE. This number can be wrong for a multitude of reasons. 1) the BBC stats are biased, the site is target at Windows users and on certain pages blocks users of other OSes (bbc.co.uk uses ActiveX for instance) 2) Detection software may not have been as tuned to recognize a Linux OS, after all many distros don't call them selves 'Linux', it may not be in the user agent string. (simply looking for the word Linux is not good enough). 3) A Linux user may have been misreporting the Operating System (commonly used to cater for sites that do user agent sniffing badly, also used to blend in with the crowd for anonymity). 4) Someone may have a dual boot (or triple or more), and may only be using Windows to view bbc.co.ku, possibly due to being locked out by previously mentioned technological practices of the BBC. 5) Some 'users' may not be real people, they may be robots spoofing there user agent. 90% of email is spam. How have you accounted for web robots browsing your site looking for email addresses or trying to post spam comments (they would not hit robots.txt or say robot in the user agent, that would give them away)? I am thinking most spam bots would impersonate IE on Windows as it probably has the highest market share so much harder o filter. (by how high we are unsure). Additionally you could argue you would get the less knowledgable users in this sampling, I rarely hit the BBC home page, why bother? I know where I want to go and I get the news feeds in a handy RSS so I probably don't hit news.bbc.co.uk's homepage either. I have the pages I need on bookmarks, (Favourites for you IE users). This is the great thing about statistics people like you claim they show something and try to cover up the failings of how the sampling was done. It shows only as much as it records. The number of recognized User Agent strings for hits on the BBC website. (Quick question, is this per IP or per page hit? page hit would be bad as it would allow robots to skew the results badly as they would hit far more pages). I really do dislike statistics, especially when people try to claim that they prove something without accounting for the method of gathering. And now a quote: There are three kinds of commonly recognised untruths: Lies, damn lies and statistics. - Mark Twain This quote from Mark Twain is accurate; statistics are often used to lie to the public because most people do not understand how statistics work. And this quote is from where you ask? Why it is from the BBC of course! (well I had to use the BBC quote didn't I? especially it is the first result on Google for: lies damn lies statistics) Maybe you should improve your stats? 1.Group each unique header together and have a Skilled Human with knowledge of all operating system classify them according to OS. 2. Make each visitor pass a Turing Test prior to using there User Agent. 3. Verify details of OS using other methods, i.e. Javascript could check, or use OS fingerprinting (hopefully it wouldn't hit NAT routers, otherwise you'd probably get the OS of a router,. which although interesting is not what we are looking for is it?). On the subject of whether to support IE 5, is it supported by Microsoft or has it been end of lifed? If it's been end of lifed then maybe you don't need to support it. Why do you need to 'support' specific browsers anyway? This is what standards are ofr, I don't need to check the compatibility with every piece of software on every switch between here and my destination node, they are using a standard I just make sure I follow that standard. Why should the HTML content be any different? The underlying TCP/IP and HTTP system seem to work much more compatibly than all these websites, many of which display poorly if you stray so slightly of the most common browser and settings, does this not show that standards work better? Andy -- First they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you then you win. - Mohandas Gandhi - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
Andy wrote: On 26/03/07, Jeremy Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 0.4% of users at the time used a Linux operating system ;) That's not entirely true is it? Please do not try to mislead people. Admittedly, I've only met Jem a few times, but I feel I ought to defend his honour here by pointing out that I don't believe he's the misleading type. What is more likely is: 0.4% of users WHERE DETECTED AS using a Linux operating system AT THE TIME THEY VISITED THE BBC SITE. Well, we are talking about stats based on visits to the bbc.co.uk home page, so I kind of took that as implicit. This number can be wrong for a multitude of reasons. Indeed. But for all you know, it's also right. 1) the BBC stats are biased, the site is target at Windows users and on certain pages blocks users of other OSes That's not my experience of it; my usual browser is Firefox on Gentoo Linux, and I can't recall the last time I was blocked from content on bbc.co.uk. This is the great thing about statistics people like you claim they show something and try to cover up the failings of how the sampling was done. People like you, eh? I trust you have the data to support such a generalized denigration. I really do dislike statistics, especially when people try to claim that they prove something without accounting for the method of gathering. I suspect that you dislike abuse of statistics, as I do; statistics themselves are tremendously useful, and I find them really quite hard to dislike by themselves. Maybe you should improve your stats? 1.Group each unique header together and have a Skilled Human with knowledge of all operating system classify them according to OS. Not exactly scalable. 2. Make each visitor pass a Turing Test prior to using there User Agent. Not exactly possible. It would probably be easier and cheaper to just add 'Browsing platform' as a question in the next census. Then we'd have the data for a whole decade of quibbling. 3. Verify details of OS using other methods, i.e. Javascript could check, An interesting suggestion, given your other comments about just using what's standard, and given how uniformly available and consistent Javascript isn't. Why do you need to 'support' specific browsers anyway? This is what standards are ofr, [...] Why should the HTML content be any different? Because an ounce of facts beats a ton of wishful thinking. Just because Microsoft, Mozilla and others ought to implement standards-compatible software doesn't mean they actually do, and any serious web developer is mindful of the technologies that people actually have, not those that she would rather they had. The underlying TCP/IP and HTTP system seem to work much more compatibly than all these websites, [...] does this not show that standards work better? Not a relevant comparison, in my opinion. Standards such as TCP/IP and HTTP are often substantially easier to implement correctly than client-side web standards. Morever, the Internet Protocols were never used as strategic weapons in a struggle for the desktop, so had no reason to break out in ugly rashes of vendor-specific quirks. Like it or not, any competent, non-trivial web site today simply has to take account of differences at the client, both in implementation and in customization, and this isn't a situation that's going to go away any time soon, especially with the burgeoning of Ajax-like interactivity and the use of mobile devices as browsers. -- Frank Wales [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
Just for fun: the february data reworked to show the different flavours of IE at their appropriate % point. There's not much difference between Safari (all versions) and IE5.5 share. Again, I can't break out the different flavours of FF and Safari. Bear in mind this is % of PIs, not of users, so heavy consumption would skew these shares, and I'm willing to bet that FF users eat more internets than IE 6 / 7 users, on average. Browser % share of PIs IE 6.0 48.29 IE 7.0 25.15 Mozilla-Firefox 11.59 Unidentified5.17 Safari 2.87 IE 5.5 2.55 Cable 1.5 Netscape0.95 IE 5.0 0.50 Opera 0.37 IE 4.0 0.29 Pocket_PC 0.28 KDDI-EZweb 0.28 IE 5.2 0.08 IE 5.1 0.05 AOL 0.05 Lynx0.02 IE 3.0 0.01 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
Thanks Kim These are fab. Would be great if the BBC had somewhere where it published this information on a regular basis? While we're on the subject of browser testing, is anyone else using Yahoo's Graded Browser Support method? G On 26/03/07, Kim Plowright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just for fun: the february data reworked to show the different flavours of IE at their appropriate % point. There's not much difference between Safari (all versions) and IE5.5 share. Again, I can't break out the different flavours of FF and Safari. Bear in mind this is % of PIs, not of users, so heavy consumption would skew these shares, and I'm willing to bet that FF users eat more internets than IE 6 / 7 users, on average. Browser % share of PIs IE 6.0 48.29 IE 7.0 25.15 Mozilla-Firefox 11.59 Unidentified5.17 Safari 2.87 IE 5.5 2.55 Cable 1.5 Netscape0.95 IE 5.0 0.50 Opera 0.37 IE 4.0 0.29 Pocket_PC 0.28 KDDI-EZweb 0.28 IE 5.2 0.08 IE 5.1 0.05 AOL 0.05 Lynx0.02 IE 3.0 0.01 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Gareth Rushgrove morethanseven.net webdesignbookshelf.com refreshnewcastle.org frontendarchitecture.com - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Browser Stats
Martin (who might be on here later) put this article together which could also be of interest. http://www.currybet.net/articles/user_agents/index.php before I knew it I was involved in a lengthy statistical analysis of the browsers and operating systems that request the BBC homepage at http://www.bbc.co.uk.; It's a year or so old now but has the usual excellent insight/analysis from MB. 0.4% of users at the time used a Linux operating system ;) Jem -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of gareth rushgrove Sent: 26 March 2007 14:06 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Browser Stats Thanks Kim These are fab. Would be great if the BBC had somewhere where it published this information on a regular basis? While we're on the subject of browser testing, is anyone else using Yahoo's Graded Browser Support method? G On 26/03/07, Kim Plowright [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just for fun: the february data reworked to show the different flavours of IE at their appropriate % point. There's not much difference between Safari (all versions) and IE5.5 share. Again, I can't break out the different flavours of FF and Safari. Bear in mind this is % of PIs, not of users, so heavy consumption would skew these shares, and I'm willing to bet that FF users eat more internets than IE 6 / 7 users, on average. Browser % share of PIs IE 6.0 48.29 IE 7.0 25.15 Mozilla-Firefox 11.59 Unidentified5.17 Safari 2.87 IE 5.5 2.55 Cable 1.5 Netscape0.95 IE 5.0 0.50 Opera 0.37 IE 4.0 0.29 Pocket_PC 0.28 KDDI-EZweb 0.28 IE 5.2 0.08 IE 5.1 0.05 AOL 0.05 Lynx0.02 IE 3.0 0.01 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Gareth Rushgrove morethanseven.net webdesignbookshelf.com refreshnewcastle.org frontendarchitecture.com - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Browser Stats
Hello all, Fantastic information - this is very interesting indeed. Thanks to Kim for the bbc.co.uk information, Richard and Brain for their information and James for the virginradio.co.uk and the other sites. I think this allows us all to build up quite a clear picture of what the 'average' user will surf with. From the bbc.co.uk data, if IE5.5 is more or less on a par with Safari, there are two ways of looking at it - Since the number of users are similar, if you support Safari you should support IE5.5 - Alternatively since IE5.5 will be harder work to support, and it's border line anyway, drop support For a site which is looking to support as wide a range of users as possible, it looks like IE5.5 should still be supported (if the target audience is as wide as the BBC's) - although James' statistics did show what appears to be a base line of IE5.x users - while IE5.0 should be dropped (in a graded way). I really like how the BBC does it's browser support - very nice work! Thank you very much to everyone for sharing this data - it really is very interesting. And I second the request for the BBC to publish this data (just as it is below), which would be a really good guide for what range of browsers the average person uses. Many thanks Allan On 26 Mar 2007, at 12:15, Kim Plowright wrote: Just for fun: the february data reworked to show the different flavours of IE at their appropriate % point. There's not much difference between Safari (all versions) and IE5.5 share. Again, I can't break out the different flavours of FF and Safari. Bear in mind this is % of PIs, not of users, so heavy consumption would skew these shares, and I'm willing to bet that FF users eat more internets than IE 6 / 7 users, on average. Browser % share of PIs IE 6.0 48.29 IE 7.0 25.15 Mozilla-Firefox 11.59 Unidentified5.17 Safari 2.87 IE 5.5 2.55 Cable 1.5 Netscape0.95 IE 5.0 0.50 Opera 0.37 IE 4.0 0.29 Pocket_PC 0.28 KDDI-EZweb 0.28 IE 5.2 0.08 IE 5.1 0.05 AOL 0.05 Lynx0.02 IE 3.0 0.01 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/ mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail- archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
