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Mozilla Chairman Speaks on Open Source/Microsoft
ChrisMDP writes "Tom's Hardware has an interesting interview with Mitch Kapor, the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation. They discuss, amongst other things, what it's like competing with Microsoft, and Firefox as an operating system." From the interview: "Pragmatically, I think we have to distinguish between a base set of extensions and everything else. It gets progressively more difficult to create seamless solutions when there are nearly infinite possibilities for customization and tweaking of settings. There's a basic tension in principle that can never be completely resolved."
It's called bloat. It happened to Red Hat. It happened to SuSE and it happened to Opera. You have to have limited objectives to avoid bloat. This is the key for browsers like Lynx etc. I would say Slackware Linux is one of the few distros that has managed to avoid bloat whilst still being very modern and "full of possibilities"...
Microsoft has never intended to compete on a level playing field. Instead they have tipped the field to favor themselves, sacrificing product quality and user benefit over and over again.
This is a great quote. It explains partially how Microsoft got where they are today, and why their current size and monopoly is unsustainable. Unless they make a fundamental change in their business model, something's going to happen to them.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
Q: how does it feel to spend 20 years being beaten^H^H^H^H competing with Microsoft?
A: Microsoft totally cheat. They don't play fair. OK, sometimes they can pull their socks up, like when they bought Spyglass and abandoned MSN version 1.
Q: Firefox is like... the new operating system?
A: Yes, and one day it may actually instal Flash support automatically. There's no end to what's possible?
Q: How's Chandler doing?
A: Who?
Q: You know, the open source thingy.
A: Ah, yes, very well. That's such a kind thing to ask. Any day now. There's no beating open source.
Q: so, since CPU's have passed 3Ghz, does it make sense to write better code?
A: better code is better code.
Sigh.
I love Firefox open source as much as the next righteous Slashdotter, and Kapor is a totally cool dude, but WTF? WTFF?
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
The challenge is changing the end-user more than anything. I have tried for the longest to get my company to convert to Firefox, but users have integrated, in their heads, that to use the web is to use IE, and they can tell they're firing up another browser they get nervous, blame all problems going forward on the new browser, and simply don't like change. Microsoft did something very powerful by link IE to Windows. IE has become saturated within the minds of users. The few users I have converted over I have to change the new browser icon to the big "E."
People also have a great amount of grace for microsoft, excusing their security holes, making such statements as, "well, if another browser gets as popular as IE then it'll have the same problems, etc." And I'm talking about IT professionals not just end users. I try to explain that, no, Microsoft has been uniquely bad at security....
No matter what the browser, it has an uphill climb against IE....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
somehow I always think that this premise might actually be somewhat true for our society:
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb."
Forgot where that is from (Spaceballs?), but sometimes I feel that evil does win out in the end. Companies that use evil tactics to get ahead may not win out in the long run, but really screw things up in the short timeframe.
Of course you could look at it this way, Firefox could be an example of Good winning in the long run because Microsoft was being evil 5-8 years ago. Wow, its been that long already?
This was posted in reply to something else, but its kinda relivant here.
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The thing is, I've never seen MS as a big evil company.
Sure, they want marketshare - who doesnt?
They released windows with its own exploitable bugs - JUST like every other software company out there.
They made Windows easy to use, yes they used a security model of normal users=admin, not wise, but what do they do, tell each and every person using 3.1/95/98 that they should learn new skills just to do the same as they did before?
They release tools to remove malicious software from a computer, something which once Linux takes off will be just as needed, and people complain.
They try to listen to people, and produce products which have been consistently more user friendly than any of the linux distros. (Side note, this is changing now, in the last 12-18months I have seen massive improvements with Linux distros, I personally like Ubuntu)
They try to bring everything together and give everyone everything, and IMHO do an admirable job.
When was the last time YOU personally found a Windows bug - something that wasn't known about before? (I know I've found and submitted brand new bugs in Linux, however whenever I've spotted something in Windows, its already documented and ready for some kind of fix or workaround).
I'm not a hacker trying to exploit the system, just in normal day to day use, your hard pressed to find actual bugs in MS software.
as an example, in the Memo text area I'm typing in now - firefox on xp - If I click my mouse at the left hand edge, 1 pixel in - to select a line of text, the cursor moves offscreen to the bottom of the text instead of at the start of the line with your mouse. 100% bug, not security related, but enough to make somebody somewhere tear their hair out. I've never seen anything similar in MS software.
They just can't win.
I would love to post logged in, but I really would get blasted for it, I might admire MS, but I'm not fucking dumb.
Yes. It's a good thing we have a comercial product like Windows that is Bloat and Bug free.
No, it's called bloat when the nearly infinite possibilities are part of the default application - the base set.
That's why Mozilla and Firefox work with extensions. Users can personalise their application, add the missing features they need (or think they need). But without the overhead of the missing features they don't need.
That's particularly true for a light-weight browser as Firefox.
But because the fact that lots of extensions exists and lots of combinations of extensions are possible, the problem of the nearly infinite possibilities for customization and tweaking of settings is as real in such a customisable application with extensions as it is in a bloated application.
Microsoft allready has a 98% marketshare, most Opensource apps don't.
Had a hard time reading the article, with all the MS advertising in the page...
I hate it when people say "if firefox gets as popular as IE it will have the same problems". People who say that just don't get it... open source software is inherently more secure and any problems that do come up will be fixed quickly. Simply not the case with IE, nor will it ever be.
Meh.
Dang, it looks like mozilla is going the way of emacs... "What? You're exiting mozilla? Why? It has everything you'll ever need for your entire computing experience! It debugs itself too!"
It's not evil. It's good strategy. I would love if Firefox would start playing dirty when it comes to advertising and everything while playing a game as clean as possible when it comes to the software itself.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
Whassat? Firefox as an operating system? You mean a program that was cut off from the "bigger" mozilla to be "just a browser"? Hm.... When a new Firefox's Firefox is due to fork out? :-)
He talks about it taking just a "few clicks" to get Flash, RP, and other plugins working. Obviously he's not talking about Firefox on Linux. Flash, sure. It's probably the single easiest plugin to get to work. Most other plugins cannot be installed with the "follow this link to install the plugin" option at all. If they do manage to install, they don't seem to be able to find your plugins directory. Don't get me wrong, I love Firefox (though those 1-2 second pauses are annoying) but there needs to be some type of search in the installer to find the plugins directories. Couple that with Real Player unable to give me video on half of the Real Player content I find and you wonder what's going on. Though, that wouldn't be a Firefox issue, I know.
The chairman of the Mozilla foundation is Mitchell Baker, not Mitch Kapor.
from Securityfocus.com: as of January 2005, SecurityFocus readers using Firefox (46%) eclipsed Internet Explorer users (44%) in our traffic logs for the first time ever. I just can't wait for similar numbers hitting msn.com -- I must be a zealot for bashing microsoft.
Mitch oughta know this by now. Product is just the wrapper for the business plan. Product is just a carton you put on a shelf to aim your markeing at. Product really doesn't matter all that much. If it did then Firefox and Openoffice would have been able to charge $5 for their product and make billions doing it. And Bill knows this too because the great genius of Bill Gates is understanding that if you talk to your competitors about 'product' it will distract them from looking at your business plan. And without a credible bizplan, products like Mozilla are essentially interesting experiments that demonstrate how close you can come to MS's product. In other words they are triumphs of reverse engineering. But as I said, 'product' really doesn't matter so those organizations have spent all their time and effort to replicate a wrapper, a box without having anything to put in the box.
Back in the day of good old DOS, the Un*x and Vax guys reminded all the DOS guys, that DOS was just a program loader and not a true operating system.
Doesn't this apply to browsers as well?
I just don't see how refering to these application's as "operating systems" helps any cause they are working twards, and it would seem to add a stigma that is perhaps not necessary.
Firstly I don't understand your problem with the interview (I get that it's a little thin, but so what)...
I mean, "better code is better code" - that's not really a paraphrase of what he said, is it? He said that speed wasn't the only issue, maintainability is a biggy, which is a good answer to a rather dull question.
Second I don't understand why someone has moderated your comment funny. It wasn't supposed to be was it?
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Owwch.
"and Firefox as an operating system."
Doesn't Mitch know that it's almost exactly that statement that caused Microsoft to launch its slaughterfest against Netscape when Marc Andreesen said it?
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Now give me a ide and some documentation so that I can create xul apps. The biggest push should be to get a xul ide together to help extend and push the platform. I don't care if it is written in xul or python or whatever, don't point me to xul maker either it looks like ass and is being developed way to slowly. I love firefox now make it damn easy for me to build cool xul apps.
Got Code?
Wouldn't it be interesting if the future of real competition to MS consisted of Vietnamese programmers working for pennies on open source code which is then thrown over the wall to Bangalore who staffs the help desks to support it? Wouldn't it be interesting if the only credible response to MS's dominance was to cut the cost of development and support to near-zero and pray that no one makes a breakout development. In other words, what if the only way to fight MS is to completely destroy all innovation and fight purely on crappy service and low cost?
No really, they have. They sacrifice proper quality to get 'first to market' time and again. Then they build on that with marketing or freebies till they are the de facto standard. That's called lock in, and it doesn't benefit consumers at all.
Have you ever used a MS product that didn't piss you off in some subtle way? Apart from the MS keyboard, which is a lovely piece of kit.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Why does there have to be a business plan?
Why can't things just be done to add good things to the commons?
Why do some people see everything in fucking dollar signs?
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
That's particularly true for a light-weight browser as Firefox.
I don't know what exactly is your criteria for calling a browser a light-weight, but as for the memory footprint firefox is surprisingly similar to IE
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
Firefox probably loads the whole redering engine into memory. Do you really want to wait for lots of disk I/O every time you load a web page?
That said, wouldn't it be better if Firefox came bundled with a Flash player, etc., or its installer detected a need for customary extensions and could install at the same time? There's no technical reason why it couldn't happen.
please, leave it on a menu somewhere and off by default, I don't even want a flash player auto-compiled in the package or downloaded during browser install unless I ask it to.
thanks
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Remember java as a "platform" that ran anywhere making which OS you were running irrelevant. That got MS notice real quick. MS went from bundling java to creating j++ to not including it at all.
People forget Microsoft can sometimes can be absolutely devestating to competetion. (The Mono developers should be carefull).
I respectfully disagree. They release a product that will enter the market and is "good enough". Sometimes they miss this mark (3rd times the charm!) and sometimes they exceed this mark. For example, they were the first company with a suite of products that were bundeled together called office. And it was priced at a point that was below what it cost to get the pieces from a competitor. We can argue all day as to which product was technically better, but what cannot be argued is that the combination of price/features hit the mark. Hence Office dominating its market.
They realized that the user experience created a high barried to entry for new products, and a high barrier to exit for the user.
Bottom line, people care about what gets them most of the way there at a price that most can afford. MS hit that mark.
Yes, most MS products piss me off many times is not so subtle ways. But they get the job done. I can't think of any SW that doesn't piss me off in subtle ways (open source or otherwise).
Don't forget that Mozilla is descended from Netscape, and is anything but a "me too" IE clone.
If Firefox were reverse engineered from IE, we wouldn't be using it.
OK?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
How much of IE has been split out into preloaded OS DLLs?
I have noticed that the teacher's computers where I am attending are loaded with spyware. They were all using Internet Explorer. A few switched over to Firefox right after I told them MSIE lets spyware in. But most couldn't care less. Finally, I found something that is getting the others to switch over. I ask them "Would you use a web browser created by a convicted monopolist?" They always say "No." Then I tell them they are using one (Internet Explorer). This gets there interest and then I get them to download and switch over to Firefox.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
"Mozilla Chairman Speaks on Open Source/Microsoft"
Mozilla chairman? Who's he? Ohhh MITCH KAPOR!?!?! The guy who developed Lotus 1-2-3!!!
I can already see a Slashdot headline from 20 years in the future. "Gates Foundation Chairman Speaks at AARP Convention."
Insert witty sig here.
before i start my argument, here's my disclaimer: .
- i use firefox for all my browsing needs, on both linux and windows, been using firefox since it was in all its previous avatars - firebird, phoenix, mozilla, netscape...yawn, and the umpteen names. happy the way it handles things.
- i switched from thunderbird to opera 'cos thunderbird doesnt have a decent mbox import utility, and although complicated - opera mail is really cool - with plenty of shortkeyys to work with.
- i have a relatively decent config - amd 64 3000+, asus k8n, 512mb pc3200 ddr, geforce 2 gfx, soundblaster, 160 gb sata hdd - so its not like the machine might be an impediment for smooth running of firefox
------------------------here goes----------
- i have praised firefox enough to many people, i have evangelised firefox in browsing centres, replaced IE on many desktops at my friends and relatives' place. so why always, only talk good about firefox? there should be a fair share of critical reviews too! i have a few grouses to air, although, this is not the firefox forum.
1. the extensions management is really bad in firefox, i have been persistently having troubles with management of extensions - some of them refuse to get installed. changing versions - the plugins do not work on upgrading to the latest and the greatest release. the plugin/ extension writers are way too slow many times to upgrade. question of holes left by the extensions - lack of validity/ checks on the third party extensions. the recent inclusion of auto extension updation doesnt always work
2. bookmarks - why does the bookmark disappear when the browser crashes occasionally ? this is really hopeless. yes, i know there's an extension to fix it , bookmark backup - but why isnt it built in ? while browsing with multiple tabs, sometimes, the bookmarks in the toolbar act strange, and loads in a corner. the bookmark bugs have made many people go back to IE or switch to opera.
3. java is a pain - as it loads - is persistent. sometimes an impediment while opening multiple tabs. slows down the whole experience. the cache is like a giant leak. as you adblock many ads along the way - after a period the ad block management gets heavier, and confused sort of. (not really a firefox's fault)
these three have been a thorn in the flesh since ages. i will not be switching to any other browser, but its like - firefox isnt the undisputed king, nor is it enough to wish IE away. i hope that firefox writers will concentrate on fixing the issues - small number of manageable extensions, better plugin management, it has to be consistent even with point releases - apparently a large part of thier user-base - i am sure is an "intelligent" user - who upgrades with every point release - as shown by the large number of people who upgraded from preview release to final release. i hope mitch is listening!
One can see he has spent a lot of time with the marketing folks.
Oh it basically is. The browser 'experience' is pretty much all the same with some subtle differences and varying degrees of clean and successful implementation. One is an Accord, the other is a Camry. But generally they both do the same things the same ways and what makes your experience hard or easy or interesting or valuable for one is equally true for the other. For something to be different it would have to function differently like the address bar in XP except after that the experience is still the same. If a 'browser' worked like the XP address bar and then popped the results in a translucent subwindow inside the application you were already using, that would be a differet experience, for example.
from TFA:
rapidly evolving baby steps
Stay tuned. Imminent increases in the price of fuel will focus your attention on eliminating the less valuable pieces of vehicle feature bloat.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I see a lot of IE versus Firefox comments, so I'll just get it out of the way now.
/leaner memory footprint, and renders CSS like a good webbrowser SHOULD, then firefox loses some of it edge.
Firefox renders CSS more consistently than IE. Developers like that.
Firefox uses about 2 mb less than IE while running in windows XP viewing the same slashdot thread.
Firefox allows window tabbing.
things not affected: Popup blocking, since SP2 does it. Plugins, since activeX is dead anyways.
Basically, if IE 7 uses tabs, has a smaller
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
convict Pronunciation Key (kn-vkt)
v. convicted, convicting, convicts
v. tr.
1. Law. To find or prove (someone) guilty of an offense or crime, especially by the verdict of a court: The jury convicted the defendant of manslaughter.
2. To show or declare to be blameworthy; condemn: His remarks convicted him of a lack of sensitivity.
3. To make aware of one's sinfulness or guilt.
---
"The ruling is the climax of a trial that began just over a year ago in which the Justice Department accused Microsoft of bullying competitors in an attempt to control the personal computer software market.
"Microsoft has demonstrated it will use its prodigious market power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft's core products," Jackson wrote.
"Microsoft enjoys so much power in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems that if it wished to exercise this power solely in terms of price, it could charge a price for Windows substantially above that which could be charged in a competitive market.
"Moreover, it could do so for a significant period of time without losing an unacceptable amount of business to competitors," he added. "In other words, Microsoft enjoys monopoly power in the relevant market.""
If you think about it all three of the plugins you mentioned are solving problems that could be more appropriately solved on the other end.
1. Advertisements could go away.
2. Flash could have a setting called Click to play
3. Your bank could rewrite their code to stop blocking anything but IE.
Not that those problems are going to go away but if you think about it all of the "bloat" you mentioned are really useful features to fix a problem someone else is causing.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
So I can either live in cloud cuckoo land, or actually make my PC behave like I want it to.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The Postman
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Firefox and IE are both ultimately descendants of NCSA Mosaic, so this whole reverse-engineering debate is kind of pointless, IMO.
Power to the Peaceful
"They discuss, amongst other things, what it's like competing with Microsoft, and Firefox as an operating system."
Wow. I didn't think Firefox had reached the functionality of emacs yet...
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
Rather, I'd say that bloat is a question of architecture. The command line isn't bloat, since all the commands are properly seperated from the shell itself. If every command was a part of the shell program itself, then it would be bloat, even though it has the exact same capabilities.
That's why Firefox may be called bloated -- not because all the extensions are included by default (which they, of course, aren't), but rather because all the extensions that you choose to include run as part of the same program. They become part of the firefox program itself when you install them. That is also why "It gets progressively more difficult to create seamless solutions". Since the extensions aren't properly seperated from themselves or the core Firefox program (the shell, if you will), it becomes ever more difficult to avoid conflicts.
That's also why a Linux distro is often considered less bloated than Windows, even though it's capable of so much more.
Note again the parallel of the UNIX command line. There are even more combinations of programs (extensions, if you will) in the command line than there are for Firefox, but that's not a problem since it has a better underlying architecture. Not really part of the subject, but I can't help noting how "light-weight" is such a relative word... Firefox may be light-weight compared to IE, the Mozilla suite, etc., but can you really call any program that takes 25 MBs of memory just to start of "light-weight"?Sorry, but I think MSFT has a very long way to go
before their "ship goes turtle". $50 Billion USD
can buy an awful lot of "pontoon outriggers", in
the form of (1) USA software patents, (2) DCMA,
(3) buying their way into EU software patents,
and (4) SCO-like attacks against F/OSS.
Unless, of course, there is a "sea change" in
American politics, and an honest-to-goodness
populist regime comes to power (Executive Branch
AND Legislative Branch). Given the current SITREP,
those are some very long odds to hope for.
Anonymous Coward
I am quoting from somewhere in the New Testament.
You might think that evil wins, but it never does.
It seems to for a while and then it just fails.
Evil does not win in the end, will not win.
It has already lost.
Of course it is. Haven't you noticed that even if the number oh Hz (Mhz, Ghz) continues to increase as Moore law says, the performance doesn't have the same increment?
(I think it's even an economic law that says this, although it doesn't have a proof for microprocessors).
So the new Hz's that are coming are more sluggish, more slow and young and not that restless as the ones from days back.
Processors' pipes are lenghtening before their speed can manage it.
Therefore, until we get ourself some new type of hardware to code onto, we have to write better code. Even if it's automatically generated by RAD tools, algorithms still count when measuring performance.
ergo:There is no point writing bad code just because processors are faster
On the other side, there are some points in writing slightly slower bad code that can be:
- read later by another developer
- extensible - produces closer-to-usability programs.
I agree with an upper post that Commodore would do them all, but I won't manage living without today's UIs.
gtkaml.org
Why yes I do. I mean being citizens is all well and good I supose, i mean it has a tough history because of people like Stalin and Lenen. In the end though, I can only judge what has happened to me, and for me capitalism has worked out good.
I see this atrophic concept of Market and Share coming up again and again, let's break it down shall we?
The word marketshare doesn't exist, though lately (interestingly enough) has been in wide circulation regardless.
People seem to forget this marketshare was once comprised of two words, Market and Share.
The first word 'Market' signifies an environment predisposed to maximal choice for the benefit of consumers, and also for the vendors who enjoy a large turnout on market day. M$'s concept of Market would be like going to buy fruit and vegetables on market day to find only one vendor. Disturbingly the previous vendors now all seem to be stacking shelves and helping you put fruit in bags..
The second word here is 'Share'. In the context of Market Share is perhaps best considered as the verb to share. 'To share' implicitly means 'to distribute ownership of - to partake, enjoy or suffer with others'. This word 'share' M$ simply has no concept of - except of course in the context of 'shares' (distributed ownership of the company not the market).
M$ doesn't seek Market Share, perhaps they seek this new thing called 'Marketshare' i'm not sure. One thing certain is that they seek 'Monopoly', the word I think the parent's author was looking for. Monopoly is also made of two words, Mono (a prefex signifying 'One') and Poly (also a prefix/adjective meaning 'of many atoms or parts).
It all depends which you put in front of the other and whether there's air in between.
Try 'Sharemarket' and 'Share Market' for instance, get it?
andanotherthing.......
I REALLY wish Offline Files would replicate the folder structure rather than just displaying the files (or am I being a real muppet and missing something?)
When a passenger of the foot, hooves in sight, tootel the horn trumpet melodiously
Silly---
Firefox is not an operating system. EMACS, OTOH.....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Have a read of "The Selfish Gene". It goes into dept about the "Good/Diplomatic versus 'Evil/Agressive'" issue.
n /GameTh eory.htm
This link covers the basic concept without going into the math:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/bnbg6billio
Here's an excerpt.
=======================
More sophisticated games from the field of Game Theory are "games" like "Hawks & Doves", invented by John Maynard Smith. Hawks and Doves are terms used to describe 2 simple strategies employed by members of the same species. In its simplest form, Hawks & Doves assume that none of the members of the species can tell which strategy an opponent will employ until they fight the opponent (they also do not remember previous fights). Hawks beat Doves whenever they fight (& the Doves quickly run away), but Hawks are wounded by other Hawks. When a Dove fights a Dove the fighting is more prolonged & ritualised, and nobody gets hurt. Also, the odds for a win in a Dove versus Dove contest are 50-50. Taking my arbitrary scores from The Selfish Gene, allocate 50 points for a win, 0 for losing, -100 for getting injured and -10 for wasting time fighting.
Without getting into all the mathematics here, the average payout per fight in an all-Dove population is +15, so the average Dove does quite nicely. However, suppose a single Hawk is born into the population. Its payout is always +50 (it always wins without wasting time) so, in Dawkins' example, the Hawks genes will spread throughout the population. However, in an all-Hawk population, the average payout is -25. Supposing a single Dove is born into this population, its payout will always be 0 (it never wins, but it never wastes time). Hence, as the Dove strategy is now the best, its genes will spread through the population. Hence, the expectation is that populations will oscillate between the two extremes of all-Hawk or all-Dove population. However, for the scoring system used (and you can easily invent others), a population ratio of 5/12 Doves and 7/12 Hawks is proven to be stable - this is an ESS. Also, the average payout (irrespective of whether you are a Dove or a Hawk) is +6 1/4. This is not the optimum average payout, as you can see, but it is the most stable outcome. A similar Game Theory argument can explain why many sex ratios (not just for humans) are roughly 50-50.
More sophisticated strategies include the Retaliator (acts like a Dove to a Dove, and a Hawk to Hawk, and a Dove when it meets another Retaliator), the Bully (acts like a Hawk until attacked, then acts like a Dove), the Random Retaliator (50-50 chance of acting like a Dove, or a Hawk), and so on. Retaliator is a very successful strategy, much like Tit-For-Tat.
Does it even support Unicode? That alone could double the size of the application.
Clever signature text goes here.
Really. I have no idea what you are trying to say, but there must be something there because you've been moderated +5 and you have a low UID.
The goal - the bizplan - of FF and OOo is not to make money, it's to make products.
Have you ever used a MS product that didn't piss you off in some subtle way?
I think the same can be said about mostly any computer software on the market.
Flash can be automatically installed, I've done it in Windows and Linux. Just visit a page with an SWF in and it prompts you. Of course, you need root on a Unix box.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
I'm a self-taught programmer, and I'll admit not a very skilled one because I've had few opportunities for my code to be used outside of my own computer. That hasn't stopped me from trying though. I've been writing games on and off for years, and this has been my experience.
:^)
My first computer was a C64, and the game I was writing quickly grew beyond it's capabilities. It was a case of "Wouldn't it be nice if I could do this..."
Next, was a C128, and the same thing happened again, but more quickly this time and for the same reason.
Then came the Amiga 500 (upgraded of course). I rewrote my old code and thought I might be able to get it all to work. It wasn't feature-creep this time though - my apartment was broken into and my computer stolen.
Then I finally got my first PC, and I started a new game. I had it working! Everything I wanted and more was in it except... A full featured open-ended universe for the player to well... play in. So I started a universe creator that turned into a strategy game that has become an enormous resource hog. To give you some idea of the kind of creeping bloat we're talking about now, I'm working on simulating nationalism and religious strife and their effects on planetary economies. It has become less a programming task than an endless crusade. By the time I finish one feature (I just rewrote the code for diseases), I have two new ones. I WILL exceed the capabilities again of this machine.
So keeping in mind that I'm a disorganized and crappy programmer, here's Tim's Law of Feature Creep (as it applies to Tim): Regardless of resource supply, demand WILL grow to meet it.
And for good measure, here's Tim's Law of Social Interaction: Nothing good will come of a conversation that starts with: "Here, smell this."
Seeing as that's my only social law, it's easy to see why I'm 35, single, and dateless for almost 12 years.
i just copy the userContent.css file in my profile directory. no need to install adblock nor flash click to play.
no need to install some of these extensions when those features are already in the default browser...
my blog
>>Seeing as that's my only social law, it's easy to see why I'm 35, single, and dateless for almost 12 years. :^)
Hey! Even pathetic losers like you can get a girlfriend now...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/24/v_girl/
Rather, I'd say that bloat is a question of architecture. The command line isn't bloat, since all the commands are properly seperated from the shell itself. If every command was a part of the shell program itself, then it would be bloat, even though it has the exact same capabilities.
:)
So busybox is bloat.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Have you ever used a MS product that didn't piss you off in some subtle way?
Have you ever used a product that didn't piss you off in some subtle way?
You wouldn't happen to be trolling, now, would you? :)
-Mike
Schrödinger's cat is not amused—maybe.
Well, if you had seen the first set of computer generated timelines from the planet "Hollow"(names randomly picked when colonized), you'd think that my nationalism model was pretty funny too. Positive effect - negative effect, what's the difference? One little typo... and you've never seen people so happy about having their society descend into anarchy.
My favorite stupid mistake (on this game) though had to be the immortal planetary governor of Mars. Two little typos and the bastard won every election for 400 years and refused to die of old age.
My all-time favorite blunder on any game I've written had a simulated starship being chased down by a SAR drone (Search and Rescue - it was going out to collect an ejected pilot). I would pause, try to debug the problem, restart, run away again, pause, debug, rinse, repeat... for two hours before I found that little mistake.
It gets progressively more difficult to create seamless solutions when there are nearly infinite possibilities for customization and tweaking of settings. There's a basic tension in principle that can never be completely resolved.
Sure, it can be resolved: through proper modular architecture. The UNIX shell and its associated commands have such an architecture.
Mozilla and all the other Windows refugees, on the other hand, don't. The fault isn't Microsoft's or Netscape's, though: their programmers are just victims of a bad education. They actually think that building huge object-oriented architectures in which thousands of classes live all within the same address space is a good idea. That sort of silliness started with Smalltalk, which taught a generation of programmers that putting thousands of classes together and coupling them as closely as possible is a good thing.
There is a non-bloated, good, modular architecture for GUIs out there somewhere, but someone yet needs to find it. Perhaps the first step is for people to start realizing that it is worth looking for it and that the kind of bloat represented by Mozilla, MS Office, and OpenOffice is not inevitable.
I think in a lot of instances the applications focus should be doing it's job well and plugins are great for fixing other problems or adding features that are not related to the task of the application.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I always end up seeing this all over the web. How is bloat figured?
FF, IE, and Opera all seem to use a similar amount of RAM (50MB or so) in most listings I've seen.
FF is 4.7MB to download, IE is ~12MB depending, Opera is 3.5MB.
I could go on, but I really don't see how FF is any less bloaty than the others.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Cool!
*boots Knoppix*
*wipes partition table*
*downloads Firefox installer*
*runs it*
*reboots*
What the...
Yes, as a consumer I am someone who does not just use what is there. That not only true of what I use on my computer but many of my other purchases as well. For instance, I believe that it is in-humane to raise chickens in crowded cages. So the only eggs that I will buy are the ones from the health food store that are locally grown and say right on the package the chickens get to roam free and are drug free.
I also prefer to buy American made goods that are made in this country. I rarely shop at Wall-mart because I do not like how, in recent years, they have pressured many of their suppliers to outsource to foreign countries to cut costs.
Back in the 1970's and early 1980's I did my part to conserve during the energy crises. During the tail end of the energy crisis I installed a solar hot water heater and upgraded the insulation in my house. I did my homework first and as a result I selected an exceptionally reliable solar hot water heater that is still reliably putting out hot water 25 years later. Tax credits paid for nearly half the cost of the solar hot water heater in my case back then.
Whenever I buy a major hardware item I usually do a little homework first so that I can make a good choice. I make an extra effort to select reliable well made products. I also generally refuse to do business with companies that have a history of acting in unethical ways. Microsoft is one company that I would prefer to not do business with. Yes, it does disappoint me that most computer users just use Internet Explorer because it is already there and do not care why Microsoft has been pushing them in that direction. Microsoft has been trying hard to steer people away from open fair standards by pushing Active-X, proprietary extensions of HTML and deliberately designs IE to improperly display certain web pages that are open standards compliant. Their effort to push us into using their proprietary Active-X technologies with IE and Outlook is one of the main reasons that so many computer users have spyware, viruses and worms. Few people understand how they have Microsoft to thank for that. The fact that their customers have been plagued with those problems is not enough of a reason for them to stop pushing their customers to use Active-X with IE. Don't just complain about the people that wrote the malmare, blame Microsoft too.
About 5 years ago I decided to try Linux partly due to my dislike to Microsoft's extensive long history of unethical business practices. For the first year or so I dual-booted between Linux and Windows ME. I had been a loyal Windows user through several versions of Windows, since Windows 95, but had always been plagued by computer lockups and other problems. I soon noticed how stable and trouble free Linux was by comparison. Finally Windows ME died and I just kept using Linux ever since then. I have heard that Windows XP is quite stable now but that it still suffers from serious spyware, virus and worm problems. Linux is nearly immune to those problems, is free, and by now I would never switch back to Windows even it they do fix those unacceptable problems someday. So yes, in all of the above examples, I am disappointed that most computer users do not really seem to care or know what is really going on. But anyway, I refuse to to do business with certain companies such as Microsoft which consistently act in an unethical manner.
Only they dont actually produce the keyboards, they just rebrand them.. Their mice suck too, very easy to break compared to a logitech.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Yeah: everything Debian stable has ever included. T'other day I wanted to set up webmail access to my home email server. So I surfed for ninety seconds, logged in as root, typed "apt-get install squirrelmail" and thirty seconds later (literally) I had web access to my home mail. Call it three minutes from 'want' to 'got'.
*That's* what is supposed to happen. IMO the Debian project is the ultimate 'OS' - componentised, modular, and *stable*.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
And is the focus of Firefox not on doing it's job well? It looks that way to me and looks to be doing a pretty good job. Plug-ins are written by 3rd party developers, who's focus is to improve the user experience. That Firefox incorporates features to extend it's functionality, I don't believe for a second takes away from it's main focus of being a fast, (mostly) compliant browser.
I'm no XUL expert, but I believe extensions are effective "overlaid" onto the basic mozilla app at runtime. They do not "become part" of the browser any more than HTML and javascript (which ultimately are client-side widgets) in a webpage do.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
It's a mathematical problem: if you're bad, you win, if all people are bad, they all lose.
Google "prisoners dilemma"
WYSIWIG, but what you see might not be what you need
Firefox is doing it's job well. My point was that the original poster mentioned that all of those plugins should be automatically incorporated instead of being plugins.
To me that would be bloat. Let firefox focus on browsing and building a framework to allow developers to build plugins.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Oh, I must have read the thread wrong then. I absolutely agree with you there. It's not firefox's position to decide what is advertising and what is not. It's there to display web pages.
No not at all - think of it this way. If you're selling a Bentley then your competition is not other cars. It's a plane or a skil lodge in Vail. That's their business plan. If you are MS and you spend 3 decades cobbling together mid-level products half of which were conceived by other companies then your competition is not other firms making similar products. That is not your business plan. They don't compete on product. So the product per se really isn't all that important.
If you check out these benchmarks you'll see that even the Cray Y-MP could only crunch 67 MFLOPS.
My point was that it would take 75,000 20 year-old PC's (sure, it would take less Y-MP's, but they have their own power and size issues) to equal the processing power (in FP) of a single current technology CPU. And there are more powerful processors than the Opteron x48 out there. The 2.0Ghz G5 can crank 6.0 GFLOPS. That's a 100,000 PC XT/AT's.
Many moons ago, we had a 10 MegaWatt transformer just outside of Phoenix blow. And I do mean blow. People over ten miles away heard the explosion! It is simply not practical to run 75,000 20 year-old computers. 5MW is a practically insane amount of power.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle