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If you replace GTA 3 with [insert EA Sports Title here] you can see that recycling the same engine, gameplay, art, etc is not an uncommon procedure.

Actually, come to think of it, rewriting the program from the ground up doesn't always work too well.

Yeah, you still think Thundercats was a great show up and until you actually go back and try to watch it.

Here. You'll be done with it in two hours.

M.
--
incuso

I have always felt that Linux is a nice operating system (for
hobbyists and geeks), but there are some areas where it is seriously lacking, especially when compared to its main competitor, Microsoft Windows.

* File sharing. Windows has long been superior when it comes to making large
amounts of files available to third parties. Even early versions of Windows
automatically detected and made available all directories thanks to the built in
NetBIOS-powered file sharing support. But Microsoft has realized that this
technology is inherently limited and has added even better file sharing support
to its Windows XP operating system. Universal Plug and Play will
make it possible to literally access any file, from any device! I think
universal file sharing support needs to be built into the Linux kernel soon.

* Intelligent agents. With innovations like Clippy, the talking paperclip and Microsoft Bob, Microsoft has always tried to make life easier
for its customers. With Outlook and Outlook Express, Microsoft has built a framework for developers to create even smarter agents. Especially popular agents include "Sircam", which automatically asks the users' friends for advice
on files he is working on and the "Hybris" agent, which is a self-replicating
copy of a humorous take on "Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves" (the real story!).
Microsoft is working on expanding this P2P technology to its web servers. This
project is still in the beta stage, thus the name "Code Red". The next versions
will be called "Code Yellow" and "Code Green".

* Version numbers. Linux has real naming problems. What's the difference
between a 2.4.19 and a 2.2.17 kernel anyway? And what's with those odd and even
numbers? Microsoft has always had clear and sophisticated naming/versioning
policies. For example, Windows 95 was named Windows 95 because it was released in 1995. Windows 98 was released three years later, and so on. Windows XP
brought a whole new "experience" to the user, therefore the name. I suggest that
the next Linux kernel releases be called Linux 03, Linux 04, Linux 04.5 (OSR1),
Linux 04.7B (OSR2 SP4 OEM), Linux 2005 and Linux VD (Valentine's Day edition).
Furthermore, remember how Microsoft named every upcoming version of Windows
after some Egyptian city? Cairo, Chicago and so on. I think that the development
kernels should be named after Spanish cities to celebrate Linux' Spanish
origins. Linux Milano or Linux Rome anyone?

* Multi-User Support. This has always been one of Microsoft's strong sides,
especially in the Windows 95/98 variants, where passwords were completely
unnecessary. Microsoft has made the right decision by not bothering the user
with a distinction between "normal" and "root" users too much -- practice has
shown that average users can be trusted to act responsibly and in full awareness
of the potential consequences of their actions. After all, if your operating
system doesn't trust you, why should you trust it? (To be fair, Linux is making
some progress here with the Lindows distribution, where users are always running as root.)

With Windows XP, Microsoft has again improved multi-user support. Not only
does Windows XP come with a larg

http://google.netscape.com/search?q=cache:Q-GXBuQJ rJEJ:www.atomicengines.com/ships.html

Some points:

The name is ECMAScript - one word, not two.

The only thing nonstandard is Microsoft's bastardized implementation of what it calls JScript. JScript is not ECMAScript/JavaScript.

ECMAScript/JavaScript was not was not "created by a standards board" as you claim. It was created by Brendan Eich when he was at Netscape.

It is not a piece of junk. It is a very interesing prototype based with major influences from Self.

Clearly you don't know what you're talking about.

The proposed design asserts that man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks can be eliminated by using SSL. However, SSL suffers from man in the middle vulnerabilities; see Netscape's SSL documentation and this paper from the SANS institute.

I think I was hoping for an algorithm with the handshaking complexity of Kerberos or SSL, because unfortunately a good security algorithm typically requires that level of sophistication, I would assert. Perhaps the design was aiming for a simpler starting point, with furthe refinement in the future; if so, it has met the goal nicely.

One of your points overlooks one of Fire(n)'s best features: Quick Searches.

These let you set up pretty much any search you want to, using just the URL bar. For example, mine is set up so that typing:

g = Google search
gg = Google Groups search
movie = IMDb title search
actor = IMDb person search
word = Dictionary.com search

That way you can get rid of the search bar, and save a lot of toolbar real estate.

See this for more info.

Then, you can take it to the next level with Ben Goodger's Smartsearch extension. With it, you can highlight terms in the browser, then use the contextual menu to search for those terms using the Quick Searches you already defined!

I meant Netscape Navigator, which is still very much alive, as far as I know.

I have always felt that Linux is a nice operating system (for hobbyists and geeks), but there are some areas where it is seriously lacking, especially when compared to its main competitor, Microsoft Windows.

* File sharing. Windows has long been superior when it comes to making large
amounts of files available to third parties. Even early versions of Windows
automatically detected and made available all directories thanks to the built in
NetBIOS-powered file sharing support. But Microsoft has realized that this
technology is inherently limited and has added even better file sharing support
to its Windows XP operating system. Universal Plug and Play will
make it possible to literally access any file, from any device! I think
universal file sharing support needs to be built into the Linux kernel soon.

* Intelligent agents. With innovations like Clippy, the talking paperclip and Microsoft Bob, Microsoft has always tried to make life easier
for its customers. With Outlook and Outlook Express, Microsoft has built a framework for developers to create even smarter agents. Especially popular agents include "Sircam", which automatically asks the users' friends for advice
on files he is working on and the "Hybris" agent, which is a self-replicating
copy of a humorous take on "Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves" (the real story!).
Microsoft is working on expanding this P2P technology to its web servers. This
project is still in the beta stage, thus the name "Code Red". The next versions
will be called "Code Yellow" and "Code Green".

* Version numbers. Linux has real naming problems. What's the difference
between a 2.4.19 and a 2.2.17 kernel anyway? And what's with those odd and even
numbers? Microsoft has always had clear and sophisticated naming/versioning
policies. For example, Windows 95 was named Windows 95 because it was released
in 1995. Windows 98 was released three years later, and so on. Windows XP
brought a whole new "experience" to the user, therefore the name. I suggest that
the next Linux kernel releases be called Linux 03, Linux 04, Linux 04.5 (OSR1),
Linux 04.7B (OSR2 SP4 OEM), Linux 2005 and Linux VD (Valentine's Day edition).
Furthermore, remember how Microsoft named every upcoming version of Windows
after some Egyptian city? Cairo, Chicago and so on. I think that the development
kernels should be named after Spanish cities to celebrate Linux' Spanish
origins. Linux Milano or Linux Rome anyone?

* Multi-User Support. This has always been one of Microsoft's strong sides,
especially in the Windows 95/98 variants, where passwords were completely
unnecessary. Microsoft has made the right decision by not bothering the user
with a distinction between "normal" and "root" users too much -- practice has
shown that average users can be trusted to act responsibly and in full awareness
of the potential consequences of their actions. After all, if your operating
system doesn't trust you, why should you trust it? (To be fair, Linux is making
some progress here with the Lindows distribution, where users are always running as root.)

With Windows XP, Microsoft has again improved multi-user support. Not only
does Windows XP come with a larg

I have always felt that Linux is a nice operating system (for hobbyists and geeks), but there are some areas where it is seriously lacking, especially when compared to its main competitor, Microsoft Windows.

* File sharing. Windows has long been superior when it comes to making large
amounts of files available to third parties. Even early versions of Windows
automatically detected and made available all directories thanks to the built in
NetBIOS-powered file sharing support. But Microsoft has realized that this
technology is inherently limited and has added even better file sharing support
to its Windows XP operating system. Universal Plug and Play will
make it possible to literally access any file, from any device! I think
universal file sharing support needs to be built into the Linux kernel soon.

* Intelligent agents. With innovations like Clippy, the talking paperclip and Microsoft Bob, Microsoft has always tried to make life easier
for its customers. With Outlook and Outlook Express, Microsoft has built a framework for developers to create even smarter agents. Especially popular agents include "Sircam", which automatically asks the users' friends for advice
on files he is working on and the "Hybris" agent, which is a self-replicating
copy of a humorous take on "Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves" (the real story!).
Microsoft is working on expanding this P2P technology to its web servers. This
project is still in the beta stage, thus the name "Code Red". The next versions
will be called "Code Yellow" and "Code Green".

* Version numbers. Linux has real naming problems. What's the difference
between a 2.4.19 and a 2.2.17 kernel anyway? And what's with those odd and even
numbers? Microsoft has always had clear and sophisticated naming/versioning
policies. For example, Windows 95 was named Windows 95 because it was released
in 1995. Windows 98 was released three years later, and so on. Windows XP
brought a whole new "experience" to the user, therefore the name. I suggest that
the next Linux kernel releases be called Linux 03, Linux 04, Linux 04.5 (OSR1),
Linux 04.7B (OSR2 SP4 OEM), Linux 2005 and Linux VD (Valentine's Day edition).
Furthermore, remember how Microsoft named every upcoming version of Windows
after some Egyptian city? Cairo, Chicago and so on. I think that the development
kernels should be named after Spanish cities to celebrate Linux' Spanish
origins. Linux Milano or Linux Rome anyone?

* Multi-User Support. This has always been one of Microsoft's strong sides,
especially in the Windows 95/98 variants, where passwords were completely
unnecessary. Microsoft has made the right decision by not bothering the user
with a distinction between "normal" and "root" users too much -- practice has
shown that average users can be trusted to act responsibly and in full awareness
of the potential consequences of their actions. After all, if your operating
system doesn't trust you, why should you trust it? (To be fair, Linux is making
some progress here with the Lindows distribution, where users are always running as root.)

With Windows XP, Microsoft has again improved multi-user support. Not only
does Windows XP come with a larg

this is LiveConnect I'm actually not totally familiar with its history but i know it's used by the Flash plugin to be able to talk to browser windows. Does anyone have any good examples of where it is useful for Java applets or anywhere else?

I have always felt that Linux is a nice operating system (for hobbyists and geeks), but there are some areas where it is seriously lacking, especially when compared to its main competitor, Microsoft Windows.

* File sharing. Windows has long been superior when it comes to making large amounts of files available to third parties. Even early versions of Windows automatically detected and made available all directories thanks to the built in
NetBIOS-powered file sharing support. But Microsoft has realized that this technology is inherently limited and has added even better file sharing support to its Windows XP operating system. Universal Plug and Play will
make it possible to literally access any file, from any device! I think universal file sharing support needs to be built into the Linux kernel soon.

* Intelligent agents. With innovations like Clippy, the talking paperclip and Microsoft Bob, Microsoft has always tried to make life easier for its customers. With Outlook and Outlook Express, Microsoft has built a framework for developers to create even smarter agents. Especially popular agents include "Sircam", which automatically asks the users' friends for advice on files he is working on and the "Hybris" agent, which is a self-replicating copy of a humorous take on "Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves" (the real story!).
Microsoft is working on expanding this P2P technology to its web servers. This
project is still in the beta stage, thus the name "Code Red". The next versions will be called "Code Yellow" and "Code Green".

* Version numbers. Linux has real naming problems. What's the difference between a 2.4.19 and a 2.2.17 kernel anyway? And what's with those odd and even numbers? Microsoft has always had clear and sophisticated naming/versioning
policies. For example, Windows 95 was named Windows 95 because it was released
in 1995. Windows 98 was released three years later, and so on. Windows XP
brought a whole new "experience" to the user, therefore the name. I suggest that the next Linux kernel releases be called Linux 03, Linux 04, Linux 04.5 (OSR1), Linux 04.7B (OSR2 SP4 OEM), Linux 2005 and Linux VD (Valentine's Day edition).
Furthermore, remember how Microsoft named every upcoming version of Windows after some Egyptian city? Cairo, Chicago and so on. I think that the development kernels should be named after Spanish cities to celebrate Linux' Spanish origins. Linux Milano or Linux Rome anyone?

* Multi-User Support. This has always been one of Microsoft's strong sides, especially in the Windows 95/98 variants, where passwords were completely
unnecessary. Microsoft has made the right decision by not bothering the user with a distinction between "normal" and "root" users too much -- practice has shown that average users can be trusted to act responsibly and in full awareness of the potential consequences of their actions. After all, if your operating system doesn't trust you, why should you trust it? (To be fair, Linux is making some progress here with the Lindows distribution, where users are always running as root.)

With Windows XP, Microsoft has again improved multi-user support. Not only does Windows XP come with a large library of user pictures that are displayed on the login screen, su

I have always felt that Linux is a nice operating system (for hobbyists and geeks), but there are some areas where it is seriously lacking, especially when compared to its main competitor, Microsoft Windows.

* File sharing. Windows has long been superior when it comes to making large
amounts of files available to third parties. Even early versions of Windows
automatically detected and made available all directories thanks to the built in
NetBIOS-powered file sharing support. But Microsoft has realized that this
technology is inherently limited and has added even better file sharing support
to its Windows XP operating system. Universal Plug and Play will
make it possible to literally access any file, from any device! I think
universal file sharing support needs to be built into the Linux kernel soon.

* Intelligent agents. With innovations like Clippy, the talking paperclip and Microsoft Bob, Microsoft has always tried to make life easier
for its customers. With Outlook and Outlook Express, Microsoft has built a framework for developers to create even smarter agents. Especially popular agents include "Sircam", which automatically asks the users' friends for advice
on files he is working on and the "Hybris" agent, which is a self-replicating
copy of a humorous take on "Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves" (the real story!).
Microsoft is working on expanding this P2P technology to its web servers. This
project is still in the beta stage, thus the name "Code Red". The next versions
will be called "Code Yellow" and "Code Green".

* Version numbers. Linux has real naming problems. What's the difference
between a 2.4.19 and a 2.2.17 kernel anyway? And what's with those odd and even
numbers? Microsoft has always had clear and sophisticated naming/versioning
policies. For example, Windows 95 was named Windows 95 because it was released
in 1995. Windows 98 was released three years later, and so on. Windows XP
brought a whole new "experience" to the user, therefore the name. I suggest that
the next Linux kernel releases be called Linux 03, Linux 04, Linux 04.5 (OSR1),
Linux 04.7B (OSR2 SP4 OEM), Linux 2005 and Linux VD (Valentine's Day edition).
Furthermore, remember how Microsoft named every upcoming version of Windows
after some Egyptian city? Cairo, Chicago and so on. I think that the development
kernels should be named after Spanish cities to celebrate Linux' Spanish
origins. Linux Milano or Linux Rome anyone?

* Multi-User Support. This has always been one of Microsoft's strong sides,
especially in the Windows 95/98 variants, where passwords were completely
unnecessary. Microsoft has made the right decision by not bothering the user
with a distinction between "normal" and "root" users too much -- practice has
shown that average users can be trusted to act responsibly and in full awareness
of the potential consequences of their actions. After all, if your operating
system doesn't trust you, why should you trust it? (To be fair, Linux is making
some progress here with the Lindows distribution, where users are always running as root.)

With Windows XP, Microsoft has again improved multi-user support. Not only
does Windows XP come with a larg

Similar to this?

This applies to their My Webpage" service as well as other parts of their "community". As far as I know, it's been in place during as well as since, the Yahoo-Geocities fiasco.

---PCJ

Similar to this?

This applies to their My Webpage" service as well as other parts of their "community". As far as I know, it's been in place during as well as since, the Yahoo-Geocities fiasco.

---PCJ

Mozilla also has this feature.

AC.

Gecko was developed by netscape developers after the mozilla project was started... If you don't believe me, the source code for netscape was released (and the mozilla project started) march 31st 1998. The NGLayout project (which resulted in gecko) was started late 1998.

Monday 26th October 1998 (let's be specific here) was when Mozilla development switched to focus on NGLayout. However, the new rendering engine (originally called Raptor) started as an internal Netscape project in 1997.

Yes, it was written from scratch at Netscape, but it predates the Mozilla project.

No, it doesn't. Gecko was developed by netscape developers after the mozilla project was started. The original intention of the mozilla project was to adapt ns4 to support web standards. When they realised it would be faster to rewrite the engine from scratch, they did. Then when they noticed the new engine was powerful enough to do the entire UI, not just the webpages, they rewrote the UI. It was a sort of cascade effect. Once the engine rewrite decision was made, it cascaded into rewriting everything. They still aimed for netscape 4 equivalency for mozilla 1.0, which at the time seemed smart, but in hindsight was not one of the brightest ideas, since netscape 4's design, though reasonable for the age it was created in, was horribly outdated by the time mozilla 1.0 was released. Hence the need for firebird, thunderbird, and so on.

If you don't believe me, the source code for netscape was released (and the mozilla project started) march 31st 1998. The NGLayout project (which resulted in gecko) was started late 1998.

This patent is a carte blanche for Eolas to sue pretty much anyone they choose. I don't see how Mozilla's plugins, and extensions are any different from what they are suing Microsoft over.

Someone please correct me, I sure hope I'm wrong.

It causes me great pain to be on the side of Microsoft in this issue. Damn you Eolas.

4.72 is still our standard browser because it ain't broke.

IAAAE (I am an Aerospace Engineer.)

Martian dust storms are not the big deal many people imagine they are. We're used to hurricanes, able to generate winds so strong that people are literally blown off their feet. And a few months ago we heard soldiers describe sandstorms in Iraq, where grains of sand are whipped against your skin so hard that it stings like hell.

On Mars however, the atmosphere is so thin that storm effects are quite different. The dust raised by these storms consists of tiny talcum-powder-sized particles. These thin winds would never have the "oomph" to pick up a grain of sand.

And a "raging" 150 mph wind on Mars would not be able to knock a person on his or her butt. It would only carry as much force as a relatively gentle 18 mph Earth wind.

The only possible ill-effect from a dust storm, is that a thin layer of dust might coat the lander's solar panel and reduce its efficiency by a few percent. (Not enough to prevent the lander from phoning home, though.)

"... but we'd also finally have everybody using a browser that actually supported web standards! (Yeah, IE is pretty close nowadays"

No, no it's not. Not even in the same class! It's not Netscape 4, but it sure drags its ass like that horrible melange of shit code.

Do you see rounded corners here? How about the fact that CSS support hasn't been updated it years, specifically it still mainly matches these charts which have in supporting only 80% of CSS1, 10% of CSS2, and none of the proposed CSS 3 standards? In the past 2 years, Mozilla's CSS support has not remained static.

If you do anything more complex than a table layout in IE, it just won't work. How does this look in the latest IE? Not like the reference image, I'm sure.

I can't comment about how patent dates work, but there might be prior art for this kind of application.

Netscape 4 used HTML pages to do things like certificate management. I assume these pages interfaced with local code in a "trusted" manner. See also the NS4 docs about Signed Scripts which allowed you to dthings like read/write local files.

I tend to think that Mozilla chrome has nothing to do with this patent. Most importantly, they aren't HTML.

Remember Netcaster?. Netcaster might have been a heinous abomination but it was still an app written in HTML, JS etc. as the link makes pretty clear.

Or perhaps MS thinks that the patent only covers Win32-only HTML apps. In other words cripple your HTML based app so it only runs on their platform and infringe on their patent. It makes sense to someone I'm sure.

I see too many companies take something that has been in an open-source product (like a Linux window manager) for years, and rewrite it, add a few features, and release it on Windows, for money. Probably the simplest example is popup blocking, even though most of them are free -- Mozilla and Firebird supported popup blocking long before even the first freeware plugin for Internet Explorer.

So the way to do this right is to do your homework. Before you even start planning on a project, make sure it is a unique project, and not something that could be a 3 kilobyte plugin to an existing project. If you want to try to sell 3 kilobyte plugins, it has to really be a killer app -- the only company I've seen do that successfully is CrossOver.

I realize that you could make an entirely new product with one killer feature, but if that feature could be implemented as a plugin to an existing product, it would take much less work for your competitor to do that, and it would annoy customers who don't want to have to use three different programs that do the same thing because each one has its own killer feature.

Next, if you think you can do it right and still make money, release your source code. Namesys has done this right, and though they make less money than they would otherwise, if you believe in good karma, they must be basking in it. A somewhat less successful way is to do what Netscape did with Mozilla and Sun did with StarOffice, which is based on OpenOffice -- create an open project, then make and sell a product based on that, possibly with a few added killer features (Netscape had spell checking before Mozilla did).

Perhaps the best way to do this is to make an open product and give it away, but charge for techsupport. I believe Mozilla has telephone techsupport now.

If you can't do that, at least be open about your development process. Release early and often. Document everything. Allow people to extend your product somehow, even if it's not with source code -- Half-life does this extremely well. Only charge for the really major updates, and charge less for an update. Listen to your community, and make them a community, not just a consumer base. You want a dialog with that community.

And remember that it's software, and that while there are real costs to developing it, the cost of distributing it (and making new copies) can be very close to 0, so charge appropriately.

Be independent. By that, I mean don't leech off of other companies -- particularly their weaknesses. For example, Symantec and many others sell products that would not exist if Windows was better, and ultimately make a worse experience for the consumer. There's a lot of websites out there that sell products designed to erase your internet history -- do NOT make a product like that. If people really cared so much about their history, they would use a product other than Microsoft Internet Explorer -- a product that deletes your history when you tell it to.

Whatever else your website is, don't just make it a brochure. Make it informative. Even redhat has, as long as I can remember, made their homepage in a way that's designed to hype rather than inform. I should be able to go to your site and click on "about" or "overview" for a description of what your product does -- if not in technical terms, at least not in marketing terms. I don't want to hear about a product that "enhances productivity" but won't say how it "enhances productivity". I should also be able to click on something like "contact" to send you an email.

An open bug database and a forum are also very useful things. Make sure they are open. Don't censor the forum based on content, and for the love of God don't censor the bug database! Good rea

Remember "push technology" circa 1999? "Active Channels" and "NetCaster" were supposed to revolutionize the Internet. I hated the silly "channels" bar that popped up by default in Windows after IE 4 was installed. Yeah, Microsoft, instead of searching the Web for things I'm interested in, I want you to "push" your sponsors' lame content at me. Well, at least they caught on quickly and dropped it.

For me this was another example of consumers ruling the marketplace with an iron fist. You can't get us to drive Edsels, drink New Coke, or subscribe to Active Channels, no matter how much money you have.

While you're waiting for Apple to patch this why not check out Mozilla Firebird 0.7 for OS X.

It is a great, feature rich browser. Of course you could also check out Mozilla 1.5, Camino, Netscape, iCab, Omni Web, Opera, or even IE 5 or MSN for the Mac

All of these can be downloaded from their respective sites, or from the Internet Utilities section of Apple's Mac OS X Downloads page.

Ummm, SVG is a dialect of XML. Any SVG rendering engine has an XML Parser. It is intended to do Scalable Vector Graphics only, hence the name. If you need Video, that's what ogg Theora, MPEG4, etc are for.

If you honestly believe that JavaScript, CSS, and DOM are "hopelessly inadequate when it comes to serving up dynamic content and developing web-based applications" I suggest you read Inner-Browsing:Extending Web Browsing the Navigation Paradigm on Netscape DevEdge and/or pick up a good recent book on XHTML, CSS, DOM2, and JavaScript.

Works better than SP4!

I am MR HASSAN MANTU,a God fearing person in sorrow, one of the widows of late M.K.O Abiola,Nigeria's foremost politician,businessman and philantropist.

I sincerely need your assistance, but I want you to bear in mind that this has to be strictly confidential ,I sincerely need your assistance to take custodian of the sum of Eighteen million,Eight Hundred Thousand United States Dollars (U.S$18.8m)

This money was given to me by my late husband [Chief M.K.O.Abiola] for safekeeping after the Presidential Election campaign.After his death in 1998, there was confusion in the entire Abiola family as regards sharing of the family assets and moreso, there is envy and jealousy as it was obvious that I was my husband's favourite wife,while he was alive. As soon as he passed away, coupled with the fact that, what i have and what is due to me might be taking away from me by greedy family relations whose reasons would be bothering on family tradition and ethics, I decided to deposit the money with a security company here in Nigeria,with the help of my late husband's friend who was a member of the government in power then.

I am prepared to compensate you with 15% of the total sum after the successful completion of the transaction. My son, Bimbola Abiola will be in charge of this transaction; he stays far away from the family Villa.He will be giving you more information as regards these transaction.He is my only son and we share secrets.

Please respond as soon as you get this mail and please it is important that you send your private phone and fax numbers to me so that i can forward them to the security company after an attorney must have change and legalize all the papers to your name if you are willing to assist me.

As soon as you assured me of your willingness to assist me,with the information i requested of you,my son will forward you all the necessary papers that will empower you to claim this consignment on myhalf.i.e:
1.Power of attorney,
2.Certificate of deposit,
3.Change of Ownership to your name certificate.

I intend investing a larger percentage of this funds into a profitable business venture with you as a partner if this funds gets into your costudy in the next couple of days..I would'nt want you to disappiont me please for God's sake.
God will always be there for you at your time of need.
Thanks and God Bless.

MR HASSAN MANTU
benegoekpontu@netscape.com

This is a practice known as subbranding, and it's probably a bad thing to do... it dilutes the meaning of the core term "Mozilla". Ideally, you should be offering an array of strongly-branded products, each with its own name. Of course, with Mozilla, there's a problem: the variations of Mozilla aren't all that different from each other... they're all web browsers. Ideally, this variation wouldn't be expressed through branding, but through some options in an installation wizard.

However, open source present an intresting extra twist to normal branding: open source projects need internal branding... e.g., something that appeals to potiental volunteer contributers. For example, I'd much rather work on "Firebird" than "Mozilla Lite". (It's also nice to have a concrete name for your accomplishments instead of saying "I componentized existing code so that the user had more options during installation".) In the beginning of the project, getting this appeal right is presumably more important than creating an external brand that appeals to the masses.

If Mozilla was a corporate project, I'd say they would have done better to not produce any variations: the excess energy should have been spent on developing new products alltogether. However, this mentality doesn't work in the open source world, where the majority of contributers are volunteers. If someone wants to create an intresting variation of a popular product, good for them. Some projects are worth doing just for the satisfaction, even if they never become popular.

For more on branding, see The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. Especially items 10, 14, and 15.

The patent requires that the unique identifier be returned to the client computer.

If one wants to work around it, all you have to do is assign the unique identifiers on the client, and keep them on the client.

So, if Mozilla reads /dev/urandom and hands some bytes to the server as "my unique ID", along with the user preference information, the server is allowed to store that, and later use it without violating the patent.

It's only illegal if the server makes up the UID, and hands it to the client.

Likewise, any site that uses your e-mail address as a globally unique ID does not have to violate the patent, because there is no need for the server to return your e-mail address to you.

So, all that needs to be done is the following: modify HTML forms so that you can make the client send a UID along with the form data. I'd suggest adding <input type=uid> to HTML forms.

Then, you need to add a facility to HTML cookies, so that the UID can be generated on the client. I'd suggest
Set-Cookie: UNIQUE=CUSTOMERID; path=/; expires=Wednesday, 09-Nov-99 23:12:40 GMT
which would set the NAME CUSTOMERID to a unique and random 512-bit value. The above cookie would be equivalent to
Set-Cookie: CUSTOMERID=89439263482893462; path=/; expires=Wednesday, 09-Nov-99 23:12:40 GMT

That would allow most web services to operate much as they do today, though of course there would be a substantial cost to make all those software changes.

will lose many of the bells and whistles that are standard on AOL, such as its instant messaging software and chat rooms

But based on "the Netscape service would be a smaller download" I have to assume that it would be a Netscape-branded Internet Explorer that users would use. Just imagine... "Internet Explorer powered by Netscape" as the IE window title...

This is going to cause so many support headaches, no matter what they do. I really hope they name it something distinct, but I bet you the real thought was to tie it into Netscape the portal and not Netscape the browser.

This is almost causing headaches without thinking about it... "What browser do you use?" "Netscape." "Is that the browser Netscape, the Netscape homepage, or the Netscape service?" I really hope they change the name... so confusing...

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Did you know that you can now use ActiveX objects in Netscape and Mozilla?

Well, on windows atleast. And it requires a bit of pref hacking to let other stuff run.

Microsoft is hoping everyone has forgotten about the Quality Feedback Agent that Netscape has had for years in the 4.x series browsers and above. http://wp.netscape.com/communicator/navigator/v4.5 /qfs1.html Mozilla has the same thing. http://www.mozilla.org/quality/qfa.html This is nothing new. Just more blatant technology theft from the company that made it famous in a society that accepts theft as "fair competition". If you want to argue, go search for the current "Sendo vs. Microsoft" case.

GBush I didn't do diddly for NASA either.

Actually, Bush Sr. proposed a manned mission to Mars. Would have been quite an exciting endeavor, but the public today just lacks the imagination to support such a program, unlike during the Apollo era.

You'll need to add some additional code to allow for features such as search & replace, but all that'd take is a few lines of ECMAScript/javascript...

I'm not sure that we can attribute this one to "laxness." Given the fact that software patents are legal in the US, a working interactive plugin architecture in the 1994 timeframe doesn't exactly strike me as "obvious." The first press release I can find for Netscape Navigator 2.0 -- which introduced plugins, or Live Objects, to their line -- is dated September 18, 1995. Remember those days when you went to a web page and nothing moved?

Remainder of my .sig: be the majority of voters.

I've been reading Zeldman's book Designing for Web Standards at safari.oreilly.com and it addresses this quite well. Safari and Mac IE 5.2 are very compliant to standards moreso than any version of IE on Windows, so it's not as big a deal now as it once was during the browser war era. Yeesh what a mess that was.

If you can move away from using old pre-war coding practices you'll be a step ahead in the fight. Check out these sites for more info on coding pages that look good in any browser on any platform:

• The Web Standards Project

• Zeldman's site of course.

• A List Apart

• Netscape's DevEdge is a great source of info.

• Validate your source.

• Validate your CSS.

• Another html validator.

• Accessibility is not only a good thing it's the right thing, especially if you ever make a government site.

• Bluerobot has some pre-cooked layouts to cut your teeth on.

Designing with XHTML and CSS means not leaving anybody out. From Web-enabled phones to IE 6 to text only browsers like lynx or links you'll only need to write your code once. I say do away with javascript browser detection scripts and write once, run (almost) anywhere!

There is a last resort you can go to if you must. Macromedia Flash looks the same in any browser provided you have the proper plugin. :) Although that is not my recommended solution.

This doesn't make any sense, to take a small, profitable bit of software (not profitable enough to offset bandwidth charges perhaps but it was making money) and then start giving it away-- this is obviously a move to kill the marketshare of products like Movable Type which has a commercial and non-commercial license and Radio Userland which I think is purely commercial-- so that users will use Google's blogging system in preference to probably AOL Journals, another free system that seeks to wipe-out the marketshare of another popular blogging or "Journal" system, LiveJournal .

I'm not saying that competition is bad-- but history has shown us that anyone giving something away of a class that was previously valued for real money is typically doing it for anti-competitive reasons. It might not be long before something like:

1. Background. In 1998, the United States sued Microsoft, alleging violations of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 1, 2.(1) After trial, the court found Microsoft had violated Section 2 by unlawfully maintaining its monopoly in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems ("OSs") and by unlawfully attempting to monopolize the market for internet browsers, and that it had violated Section 1 by illegally tying its Windows operating system and its Internet Explorer ("IE") browser. The court ordered Microsoft to submit a plan of divestiture that would split the company into an OS business and an applications business, and ordered interim conduct restrictions. Microsoft, 253 F.3d at 45.

1. Background. In 2006, the United States sued Google, alleging violations of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 1, 2.(1) After trial, the court found Google had violated Section 2 by unlawfully maintaining its monopoly in the market for personal content management systems ("blogs") and by unlawfully attempting to monopolize the market for search engines, and that it had violated Section 1 by illegally tying its search engine and its journaling ("blog") software. The court ordered Google to submit a plan of divestiture that would split the company into an search engine business and an applications business, and ordered interim conduct restrictions. Google, 253 F.3d at 45.

The collective Internet should reevaluate models like Freenet and make a "weaker," more light-weight distributed peer-to-peer information distribution system-- its weaker because you simply don't need the overhead of hardcore anonymity and privacy because pretty much all of the users will want to be "found" by those reading on the Internet. Google's got enough brains to figure out how to make that searcable so we need not worry about that.

Japan, the world's second largest economy, made a proposal at an Asian economic summit this week to build an inexpensive and trustworthy open-source operating system that would be based on a system such as Linux, which can be copied and modified freely.

"We'd like to see the market decide who the winners are in the software industry," Tom Robertson, Microsoft's Tokyo-based director for government affairs in Asia, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

I think the market IS deciding, which is going to be Microsoft's biggest problem for the next few years.

"Governments should not be in the position to decide who the winners are," Robertson said.

You know, I don't remember there being any protest from Microsoft when the US government stopped accepting RFP documents in WordPerfect format. I guess they've had a change of heart for some reason.

Full story at Netscape.com

It's not the governments of Japan or China that need to be put on alert, it is our own. As Departments of State, Treasury, and the White House among others, busily archive critical documents in .DOC format that will not easily be converted to anything else in a few years, low level management of these departments need to be aware that going the "safe route" of managing everything using Microsoft tools will in hindsight only allow you to say "But everyone else around me was doing that too".

I suspect there will be more and more defectors from this way of thinking, even within the US government as time goes on. However as that happens there will also be signs of desparation from Microsoft as they try and appeal to some sort of warped patriotism that says we should all keep using overpriced, buggy and undocumented junk.

We need to stop thinking of Windows as America's software equivalent to the Boeing 7x7, and start thinking of it as America's software equivalent of the Yugo...

Q: How do you make a Yugo go faster?
A: A towtruck.

Q: What do you call the shock absorbers inside a Yugo?
A: Passengers.

Already been released, it was called Netscape 6

While designing your standards compliant sites if you have netscape/mozilla a really useful sidebar to have is the devedge multibar. Along the same lines, here's an interesting site about css design.

Obviously much better then MS search netscape search gives better results After 3 supported linsk the first link is linux.com Seems alot better then MS search

This puts a whole new spin to Netscape's Amazing Fishcam.

You can do that in Mozilla, as well.

I always use ALT tags, but you know - I'll keep my nested tables, thanks. I see absolutely no reason to get rid of them when they've been working just fine for years.

Well that's your decision of course, but you are aware you are relying on non-standard behaviour, aren't you? There's nothing in the specifications that require a pixel-perfect representation of a table in the way you expect. That's the fundamental problem with abusing elements that denote meaning, rather than presentation.

What happens when browsers don't render tables the way they always have? The default look of table elements is quite dated now, perhaps browser vendors want to update the look a little. You think no browsers will ever stray from the table-layout tradition? They already have.

Imagine if there were 'security standards' that told you to leave your computer unplugged from the Internet, because it wasn't very secure.

Well CERT already advise switching off client-side scripting in web browsers.

Why should I have to replace my font tags and tables, that have worked absolutely well for *years*, with some new fangled technology that does the same thing?

You don't have to. It's just there are benefits to doing so. And I don't know where you get the idea that HTML does the same thing as CSS, they are completely different languages with completely different goals.

Dude, if you can't change the font of the site you're reading, try using a decent browser - maybe Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer won't let you alter the font size when the author has specified it in pts or pxs. Doing the proper thing and using relative sizes makes things a lot better for many people. And no, I don't consider having to fiddle with my font settings every time I go to a new site to be pleasant.

Guess what? Plain old 'current' standards like HTML work well with the vast majority of browsers, are attractive, useable, and pretty damned accessible.

CSS 2 is five years old, it's used in many websites, I would describe it as a current, established technology. Whilst HTML-only sites may be attractive, usable, and accessible, this doesn't mean that this is due to the use of HTML, it means that the sites are that way despite this abuse of HTML.

*Why* can't blind reading software handle tables, hmm?

They can. They just do it in a way you don't like, but in a way that is perfectly sensible when faced with properly-authored websites.