A lot of video producers like to rely on the fact that Flash makes it difficult to download videos to your hard drive. I wonder how they'd react if a major online video provider were to provide its content through a less restrictive method such as the video tag.
I think that's rather simple. The video tag would only be popular with free and amateur content. Flash (or Silverlight) solutions will continue to dominate the more popular commercial comment that needs to be protected. If videos were trapped behind theora playlists with commercials in-between, advocates would make solutions to circumvent the commercials and demonetize the model of the very companies who took the risk to support it.
Basically, any major media company that buys into HTML 5 video tag will be strangled by the advocates who pushed it on them in the first place, monetarily. When the production studios offering the content find out that a free video application that plays their content without commercials (hypothetically) exists, they will pull out and said video site will collapse. Colloquially, it's a trap. Commercial content needs protection because those watching it on the web do not own it.
Furthermore, there will be a minor codec war. Firefox will probably only support theora, Safari will only use h.264 (Apple will flatly refuse to use theora), same for google chrome, perhaps. Then, Microsoft will support the tag in IE, but provide support for WMV in the video tag (and possibly h.264 if we're lucky, since it's now licensed in Windows 7). So, the video tag will slowly become just as crazy as the plugin-based video players of Web 1.0... except they will be written in slow javascript instead of the fast native code of the past. Primarily, because no one has agreed on how to do it so it isn't a standard.
Cory Doctorow seems to me to be a career activist, raised in an environment of "dismantling the system." This is the sort of person who's so blinded by ideology that he'll never choose to grasp anything outside of a contrary perspective to mainstream thinking. It's not that he doesn't--he can't.
This man didn't even complete college. His education consists of attending a "Free" "Alternative Education" High School before failing out of college and working at a series of non-profits. Most of the people posting on this thread are probably more qualified to make statements on this matter in both a theoretical and real world sense. Think about it. Have you taken economics classes? You win.
We're reading the words and ideas of someone who's been raised to just say things that are contrary. When Doctorow makes sweeping statements, it's best to back away and think through them. Sci-fi writers are good at sounding like they have authority. Sometimes, this leads to brilliant and revolutionary visions of the future in a superficial sense, other times you get Scientology.
I know he's got oodles of "internet cred," but I'd just like to state for the record that I don't choose to credit this man as an authority in this field and I think we should take anything he says with a grain of salt.
Okay, I am going to attempt to swim up river here and look at this analytically instead of joining into this insane self-righteous Mozilla/Google circle-jerk.
Let's go down the list:
Security - They're correct in asserting they have better phishing and malware protection. There's no dispute over this, actually. Their phishing protection is the best. IE 8 is extrremely sandboxed, perhaps even moreso than Firefox... so there's no glaring security holes, but note that they're not mentioning sandboxing so that they don't have to mention Chrome. They would lose to Chrome on that one.
Privacy - Although Chrome has an equivalent of inPrivate browsing, Firefox still has no built-in porn mode. Furthermore, inPrivate filtering seems to be IE 8 unique.
What is InPrivate Filtering?
InPrivate Filtering helps prevent website content providers from collecting information about sites you visit. Here's how it works.
Many webpages use contentâ"such as advertisements, maps, or web analysis toolsâ"from websites other than the one you are visiting. These websites are called content providers or third-party websites. When you visit a website with third-party content, some information about you is sent to the content provider. If a content provider offers content to a large number of the websites you visit, the content provider could develop a profile of your browsing preferences. Profiles of browsing preferences can be used in a variety of ways, including for analysis and serving targeted advertisements.
Usually this third-party content is displayed seamlessly, such as in an embedded video or image. The content appears to originate from the website you originally went to, so you may not know that another website might be able to see where you are surfing. Web analysis or web measurement tools report website visitors' browsing habits, and are not always obvious to you. While these tools can sometimes appear as visible content (such as a visitor counter, for example), they are often not visible to users, as is often the case with web beacons. Web beacons are typically single-pixel transparent images whose sole purpose is to track website usage, and they do not appear as visible content.
InPrivate Filtering works by analyzing web content on the webpages you visit, and if it sees the same content being used on a number of websites, it will give you the option to allow or block that content. You can also choose to have InPrivate Filtering automatically block any content provider or third-party website it detects, or you can choose to turn off InPrivate Filtering.
Althought I am sure Firefox can have this by extension, it's not there by default. Same goes for Chrome- this is a robust privacy feature which you would not find in minimalist Chrome.
Ease of Use - This is in the eye of the beholder, isn't it? Accelerators are pretty cool if you want to customize yourself a quick browsing environment... and they can be written by users. Think of them as modern less ugly web toolbars. This is only true if common users find this model easier than Firefox's wacky extension model or Chrome's nonexistent one.
Web Standards - They're correct, once more. They do support established standards better but fail to support as many popular emerging drafts. American web developers just love using bleeding edge emerging drafts in web design, don't they?
Developer Tools - This is a matter of opinion once more. Do Firefox or Chrome have a javascript profiler? If they don't, then they're not lying. Just stating an opinion on what's important.
Reliability - Okay, this is true again. Chrome likes to crash in a really ugly unrecoverable way and Firefox just takes out the entire browser when a page misbehaves. However, despite IE's tab isolation, it's still quite possible for a bad tab to take out the browser. So, this is correct as they state it but perhaps misleading.
Customizability - They are pushing forth their customization features as comparable
Android doesn't use X - nVidia have drivers for X and for Windows - but not for Android - so no one's choosing nVidia hardware for Android - so nVidia's discouraging people from using Android....
It's not a big deal to write accelerated framebuffer drivers for a firm like Nvidia. Besides, X is not an enabler in this case but a massive hurdle to anyone trying to provide advanced graphics functionality on a linux-based platform, so to Nvidia, the lack of X on Android would actually be a plus. It's not such a big deal that they would license a Microsoft platform instead of using a "free" Google platform, either way. It might have more to do with the greater integration of technology like DirectX into the Windows Mobile platform as opposed to a lot of graphical (GL?) tricks in Android. Windows Mobile is a pretty mature system at this point vs. Android, so perhaps they believe they can squeeze more polish out of the system-- as well as customization and branding. If Nvidia is trying to push Tegra for mobile gaming, I would say Windows Mobile has a much brighter future for that then Android, given Linux's track record with libraries that support game development in general.
Perhaps that was redundant, though, given the content of the article..
And as soon as Moonlight catches up with Silverlight 2, Microsoft will have Silverlight 4 out. Let's face it, this is _exactly_ what everybody was predicting back when Moonlight started: endlessly running after Microsoft but never catching up, a perpetual existence as a "nice, but not useful for anything current" piece of software.
Or, the mono community can make use of the moonlight implementations they have finished. It's very useful and makes for a nice consistent way to develop dynamic web content..NET is really a very nice technology to develop on. You also forget that much of silverlight is open source, so the implementation curve can be narrow. I doubt online applications will be riding the bleeding edge, anyway.
Moonlight supports Silverlight 1. Support for Silverlight 2 is in "preview".
Thus far the Moonlight project is "compatible" enough to tell you your version of Silverlight is out of date, and please upgrade.
Silverlight 1 and 2 are much more different than 2 and 3. The Mono development team has explain that implementing the full CLR for Moonlight 2 is one of the largest stages of the development process. For instance, Moonlight 2 Preview already has many Silverlight 3 features implemented. So, once Moonlight 2 is out, it will not be long before Moonlight 3.
Furthermore, I consider this the best pro-developer free software rant explaining the pros of mono in general:
All slashdot readers who support ODF are guilty of distorting reality.
We can pass it off as simple ignorance. It's just something to holler about, they aren't aware of the technical details.
The FSF are all goons.
That's precisely what they are. It's not like they write code... they do "software advocacy"... read: obstructionism. They're goons.
ODF is flawed and incomplete and only Microsoft has ever produced a compliant implementation.
Not true. CleverAge has implemented it properly. For the spreadsheet standard, Kspread did as well. You should have checked my sources. OpenOffice did not.
synopsus
Oh, this is your "synopsus", eh? Wow, another clever freetard swoops by to put me in my place. Scary.
As far as I can tell, the problem here is that the article is not bending the truth to match the usual reality-distorted pro-ODF bias expected by slashdot users and other FSF goons.
Let's start with this statement:
In the ODF article, Alex Brown bends the truth to make it seem like no one is supporting ODF, and that it is a flawed and incomplete standard.
It seems to be like he doesn't fail to bend the truth. It's a flawed and incomplete standard, in some ways it is vague, in others it's simply inconsistent.
Let's take tracked changes for instance, a feature in ODF 1.1 which pretends to be complete. The reality is that the standard is so vague and broken that the most popular implementation, Google Docs, ignores the standard entirely, implementing changes in their proprietary system. Microsoft simply solves the problem by disabling the functionality in order to avoid future breaking.
Let's not talk about ODF 1.2 either, since its only a working draft.
So Microsoft was somehow able to do a perfect by the letter implementation of the ODF 1.1 (the current standard) spec, and yet they haven't got full interoperability with OpenOffice? It sounds an awful lot like Sun took a very liberal interpretation of their vague standard and are now standing by their wonky mess of source code (Ooo) as the standard-- similar to Solaris and POSIX. Thats unacceptable, ODF passed the standards bodies, not OpenOffice.org.
The fact that Microsoft could create one of the only correct implementations of the ODF standard and still break interoperability suggests that the ubiquity of this standard is largely overstated:
There are arguments to be made on the subject of digging through Sun's source code to make this vague standard work, but then ODF violates the FSF's very quote bashing MS-OOXML:
"For any standard it is essential that it is implementable by any third party without necessity of cooperation by another company"
So, you can't make interoperable ODF without referencing OpenOffice because it is vague and incomplete... but it's not a complete standard unless you don't have to rely on the assistance of a certain corporation (Sun) to implement it properly?
It sounds to me like ODF is locking functionality to Sun's software the same way DOC locks functionality to Microsoft Office. MS-OOXML may be wordy, but it turns out that you need a lot of words to make a complete office standard. ODF is a paper tiger, end of story. The problem slashdot points out here is simply a lack of reality-distorting pro-ODF bias... this "whisper campaign" might be the seeping shadow of "reality" in the reality of writing a complete and interoperable standard escapes Sun--leaving them with something terse but heavily marketed with a vicious and aggressive activist campaign by angel advertisers who fancy themselves freedom fighters.
FOSS is simply better at solving complex problems (like "how to build an operating system") than closed source development.
But it hasn't built an operating system... it created a messy clone of unix.
Can someone name an operating system "Built by Open Source"? Something relevant, please.
Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat
on
Unix Turns 40
·
· Score: 1
Okay, I should not do this...
Why must everyone start out a reply like a High School kid deciding whether or not to drink a wine cooler at a party? Indulge yourself, moron.
So what enlightend pre 70's operating systems are you referring to? Some hints are apreciated.
I don't know, MULTICS, LispVM, various time-sharing systems. They were age appropriate and forward-thinking.. for their time. Once UNIX came out, it was okay for a 70's system... then it never grew up or changed. People just kept using it and following all of its ridiculous dogmas. Basically, it put a vice on the nuts of computer science and managed to convince generations of computer scientists that the 1970's never ended. At least they never had to stress themselves learning new computing paradigms. I could scarcely imagine how much time and money society has squandered maintaining the UNIX operating system. As far as I can understand, it's been at a permanent state of 90% working.
And what is this stuff about Rome? The good lawyers, bad mathematicians part? The "nail every escaped and caught again slave to the cross" one? The guys who institutetd christianity as state religion to save their sorry state from falling apart just to see it happen anyway?
Once again, some hints are apreciated.
Are you familiar with the dark ages? People had plenty of dogmatic religion, but they had lost the ability to even irrigate their crops. Despite the fact that society had previously built fantastic empires and achieved in all sorts of high fields of study, the church led them around as a religious barbarian horde, conquering every town and burning every library. That's UNIX in a nutshell... a horde of morons burning the libraries of computing progress (Apple, Microsoft, Amiga, Xerox, Be, etc.) to convince themselves and any they should come across that man is to remain in an ancient and sorry (but very Holy!) state... the 1970's can never end for computers... no, there is nothing after text-streams, weak debuggers, and conf files! Abandon hope!
Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat
on
Unix Turns 40
·
· Score: 0, Troll
This is why we are all so grateful to see the EU stepping in to level the playing field.
I agree. That is the appropriate position of government regulation. Corporations can't fail to be self-interested.
Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat
on
Unix Turns 40
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Who says? I say the OS is irrelevant today. You should be able to tun the web experience of your choice on it. If we are speaking specifically about Windows here, we definitely don't want their "web experience" integrated. Microsoft holds a monopoly on the desk top. We certainly don't want them extending this to the web. The danger of monoculture is another thing to avoid.
Okay. That's not what you want. Microsoft really can't take the position of ruining itself, though- that is, ceding the most important spot on the desktop, the browser. They will fight for the right to offer a browser on their desktop to remain relevant on the web.
I would hardly say things are moving towards a monoculture... all the third party browsers are gaining marketshare.
Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat
on
Unix Turns 40
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Careful there - that's a meme the MS shills are trying to establish ahead of the EU ruling, and I am sure you wouldn't want to consciously repeat that. In the first place, the vast majority of consumers receive an OS when they buy the computer, so whoever sells the computer will be happy to install a browser, or several browsers, or the browser of the user's choice. Computers sold to businesses often have tech support who should be able to install a browser without too much difficulty (meaning none at all). For any case not just covered, a friend with a browser downloaded onto a thumb drive will do the trick nicely. Absolutely no need at all for the OS to come with a browser.
It's absolutely true, though. The primary purpose of your computer now-a-days is to access the web. When you're offering a platform, you're also offering a supported web experience. It's an interesting question whether it's the same sort of thing today to offer a system without a supported browser.
By all means, there's no reason they can't offer multiple browsers, though. It's simply important that there's a supported browser available. It shouldn't be any problem to do what OS X did (I forget whether it was Jaguar or Panther) and simply bundle two browsers.
Now, even Apple ships Mac OS X with only Safari. The web browser is the face and flagship for the platform. No amount of hatred of Microsoft will change that. It's going to be tricky for them to define their platform while stepping around these rulings.
This sounds like an issue of cross-platform HTML 5 usage that is relevant to everyone involved. If you'll take some time to look at About:Opera sometime, you'll find Opera makes use of open source code, also.
Above anything else, Hakon is an open standards guy. Opera is part of the open standards community, simply not the open source community (unless you count things like dragonfly).
Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat
on
Unix Turns 40
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
Microsoft told the Court that removing Explorer was impossible. They lied, but that's not the point. There's an attitude difference.
Well, explorer is pretty integrated into Windows, to be fair. Offering an operating system without a default web browser now-a-days is pretty sad... and explorer is your shell. But that's all technical details, I am sure they could create a gooned-up product to please the courts if they really wanted to.
Microsoft doesn't want you changing their OS. It's theirs, they are the only ones who get to decide what is good and what is bad.
Windows is just one system. Granted, it's a much more progressive and cohesive system, but it's just one example of a system. My main issue is not really Linux v. Windows. When you buy Windows, you're buying a professional product, not a hacked-up piece of inconsistent and undocumented crap. It's a different product with a different market.
In Unix the choice is given to the user. Change shells by simply typing the name of any of the half-dozen provided to you. If you don't like the ones that are there, write your own and distribute it.
And they all act like crappy 1980's terminals. It's so unbelievably amazing. It's just a bunch of implementations of the same sorry crap.
Forking is GOOD. When someone has a better idea in Unix, they release their better idea and people get to see it, to use it, to decide if it really is a better idea, and if it is, it will win out, and the old idea will be replaced. To do that in the Windows world, you have to hope Microsoft decides its a better idea and incorporates it for you. The eco-system is completely different.
And yet nothing ever seems to be accomplished. It's the same archaic system it was in the 80's built on the same concepts with the same interface and development tools. It's a freeze frame of decades-old computer science. I mean, people are still using X... it's just not going anywhere. Things could be so much better than this. It's like software Calvinism.
And if you think Unix prevents software from advancing, I'd like you to take a look at the World Wide Web, almost all of which was developed by that same open model you denounce. Not just TCP/IP and the web browser itself, but PHP, Ruby, all the new tools doing things that were never done before, come from those places you claim will never advance software.
What is Ruby doing that hasn't been done before? It's just doing what Java or Python did, but much much inferior in performance and resource usage. The open model is not the failure... UNIX is. A better open system could show up... and yet it doesn't. UNIX is an idealistic black hole. Its good-enough-ness cock-blocks any sort of progress or reimagination of computing. It is the lack of vision and creativity incarnate.
Sounds to me like you have your own reality distortion field.
Well hurr-duh-durr-durr-durr.
Re:Here's to the new Reformation - long live Unix!
on
Unix Turns 40
·
· Score: 0, Troll
You have the analogy backwards. Corporations such as Microsoft are the church. Their modus operandi is to constrain their users into a narrow view of thinking while extracting as much in the way of resources as possible. Linux allows escape from that, much to the chagrin of Microsoft.
This is perhaps the weakest retort anyone has ever given me on slashdot.
You've completely forgotten that there is computing outside of Microsoft and Unix... and technologically, Microsoft has been far more progressive. Linux people are taking powerful energy-wasting modern desktop hardware and running them like 1970's dumb terminals. It's pathetic and regressive. The greatest contribution of the open source community to the modern computing world is to fill the web up with so many reports and messages in forums and mailing lists of buggy, undocumented, and misbehaving software that the open source ecosystem is beginning to rival porn as the biggest wad of useless data on the web.
The masturbatory self-congratulation of the open source community alone has turned the entire web into something between an AA meeting and a fetish club for computing sadists.
Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservatism
on
Unix Turns 40
·
· Score: 0, Troll
It's wonderful to see everyone parading around and celebrating the mastery of UNIX. I've seen mention of the fact that UNIX is better because its components can be replaced... and yet this isn't any different than Windows, which can have its explorer ripped out... and yet the morons chime on.
And for all this amazing progressive openness (which will solve everything someday), the Unix Hater's Handbook is still almost as completely applicable today as it was over a decade ago when it was written.
What does that say about progress? Basically, Linux is now doing the same thing UNIX has done historically, leverage enthusiasm from conservative admins to block all progress in system development. It is the ultimate curse of the "good enough" solution, demonstrating that the most important factor in the computing world is elitism. It's the cult of the inaccessible and unusable system. It is a blackhole of useless knowledge. It's a gaping wound in security, stability, and the progress of usability.
Indeed, UNIX is as bad as it ever has been... it's 2009 and people are pushing this hellish mess onto home users, now offering desktops like Ubuntu, swallowing resources, breaking at every turn, and all at once offering less lucidity and ease of use than 20 year old commercial solutions.
UNIX is the cancer that keeps computers "geeky" and keeps the power of computing out of the hands of regular users. UNIX is like the Church which dragged society out of the enlightenment of Rome and into the dark ages, filling peoples' heads with superstition and making progress a dark taboo. Now, thanks to the new popularity of linux, CS students are raised in unix-like environments, where dogmatic and archaic beliefs will prevent them from ever advancing software. They are trapped in streams of text and monoliths, doomed to repeat outdated principles of system design.
I can't speak for Linux, I'm a FreeBSD guy but I work of a large network company here in Sunnyvale, Ca. Our product is based on FreeBSD. I know for a FACT that Yahoo, Cicso, F5, Mira point, Ironport, etc. all of which are based here in America, use FreeBSD as the basis of their product and do most of their development in America.
I am not sure if I worded that very clearly, but I was under the impression that FreeBSD was more of an American product than linux in general.
This pretty much confirms it.
As I figure it, the systems are primarily developed in the following:
Linux - China, Russia, India OpenBSD - Canada Windows, Mac, Solaris, FreeBSD - United States
Oh man... do you have any idea how outsourced/globalized the Linux market is? Linux as a commercial software product is almost entirely third world off-shored. Microsoft was sort of an outlier in doing so much development here in America.
Do you really think companies like Lynx or Motorola or Red Hat are doing their work here with American developers? They're not nearly profitable enough. If you want to be principled and supportive of the American business framework, then Linux is basically raping our software economy. Hell, even Solaris is more of an American product, and Sun is pretty globalized, as well.
I am fairly certain BSD is, as well.
All I am saying is that the Linux v. Microsoft argument is really really inappropriate here. It doesn't apply on any front. The American Linux development companies did this years ago. It's just a bigger deal when Microsoft does it.
If you are pro American industry and development that employs Americans and doesn't subvert out tax structure, you should be using Windows or Mac OS X. Seriously.
The problem is that a competitor installed an addon for a program without the user's permission. To me, it would be like Toyota mechanics tinkering around in the engine of my Mazda while I'm not home...and then giving me instructions on how to remove the parts they installed. I don't really care at all what it does or if it helps me or not.
I just don't know that it's the same, because it seems to me like this is more Microsoft acting as the platform maintainer than as a Firefox competitor. I think there's confusion here stemming from how expansive Microsoft is in this enterprise. Because one of my Microsoft's platform components is a web browser, it can be construed that they're sabotaging the competition. I just don't see that as any benefit, in this case. If Firefox is better on Windows than any other platform, then that's positive to Microsoft. They don't necessarily sell IE. I think it's more of a "value added" maneuver.
From an enterprise perspective, you don't want anything whatsoever installing on your company intranet without your permission. Granted, it is something you would likely want to go ahead and permit to install, but an IT professional should have complete control over his network.
I was talking about using ClickOnce WPF applications being used within the intranet, not them suddenly appearing on the intranet like a virus. I was speaking in reference to a company using firefox internally and wpf through the intranet.
In reality, the security issue probably has less to do with enterprise access control and more with the fact that offering firefox any system-level control over anything.NET would be insecure. A removal tool or methodology on a system level MUST be outside of firefox. A local uninstall button is about as rational as they could logically offer.
Even though I've been driving for over 20 years without having an accident, I wear my seat belt whenever I get into a car (as a driver or passenger). I'm quite happy that I've never needed it, but the fact that I've never needed it doesn't mean that I won't on my way home from work on Monday.
That's completely true, but I think the degree of caution you're taking is more akin to what you mention in the following paragraph.
It's been my experience that there is a very real trade-off between security and usability. However, I don't really feel that my preferences for web browsing have a major negative impact on my ability to use the Web. I guess this whole tangent is the result of me falling for the flamebait.
I am not trying to flame you. I just think that you're setting yourself up for the security situation of Windows 98, but in reality things have come pretty far. I keep my system up to date and pay attention every time tries to process elevate in UAC. When something seems suspicious, I investigate. Maybe I am unconsciously sandboxing more than other users, and that's a major factor.
I am trying to say your level of security is not invalid, per se, it's just excessive. You could win back some usability if you look into the security model of some new more isolated browsers (like Chrome, the Secure Safari) and be certain to simply run on a limited account and let UAC catch some of these problems. You can run as a limited user and process escalate with a password prompt like on mac or gksudo and enjoy a pretty certain level of security.
All I am trying to say is that the modern Windows security model is pretty good if used properly. It's as good as you'll get out of a consumer system.
Oh my god, that is so hard to read. You just made my comment and your snarky replies look like the Declaration of Independence.
They installed it without permission. Extensions change how firefox works. That's kind of the point of them. They add/alter functionality. In this case potentially opening a huge security hole, without permission.
It's not a security hole. There's no justification for making that claim. It's a more secure method of executing web-based.NET software than running native executables.
Then you know nothing of enterprise perspective. Enterprises can already roll out all the software they want to automatically. We roll out tons of applications all the time with no javascript, thanks.
It's a web application technology... so I was referring to web applications within an intranet.
It is a security issue. And my copy of XP is very much paid for Mr. Troll. I won't respond further because the rest of your post is just more inane trolling. (Please mod the troll to oblivion).
What is that, an incantation? You are such a dork.
But there is a brand whether or not it's intentionally created. The output of this "random barbarian horde of software developers" all falls under a single label, "open source", and therefore has the "open source" brand. He describes a brand as being "anyone's gut feeling". In other words, what is it that people think of when they hear "open source software"? Well, that's the brand. It may not have been shaped by anyone intentionally, but it still exists. So, he wants to shape it.
It is being branded, though- by Red Hat and Canonical and such. They each brand their own open source ecosystems, as does Mozilla. I believe the branding of open source should remain on a per project basis. As it stands in the mainstream, I would contend that open source is a "feature" moreso than a "brand".
It's not going to be a team effort...
However, props if you guys can distance yourself from GNU and the FSF. That will do wonders for notability.
And the MS Office team sure took Sun's ODF plugin positively. If every version of Java started stealth installing the Sun ODF plugin into installed versions of Office to fix the broken compatibility (and made it non-removable) don't you think Sysadmins on both sides of the aisle would be crying foul?
That wouldn't make any sense unless you were running a Sun supported platform... so, go back to metaphor school, cheesmo.
Quite a few sysadmins were surprised by this because checking FF plugins isn't part of the usual procedure on a test machine that you installed a new.NET framework patch to. Sure, fire up the cirtical.NET using apps, make sure everything's working. Groovy on all X test machines? Shoot the patch out to group 1. Day 2, group 2. Day 3, group 3... a week later user notices a new add-on. WTF, it's on all the machines!
Firefox is now an accepted part of the Windows ecosystem. Score one for Mozilla! It's time to add that to your test cases. Jeez, complaining because something unexpected occurred. What an uninspired lifestyle... this is what you people get paid to do!
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of video producers like to rely on the fact that Flash makes it difficult to download videos to your hard drive. I wonder how they'd react if a major online video provider were to provide its content through a less restrictive method such as the video tag.
I think that's rather simple. The video tag would only be popular with free and amateur content. Flash (or Silverlight) solutions will continue to dominate the more popular commercial comment that needs to be protected. If videos were trapped behind theora playlists with commercials in-between, advocates would make solutions to circumvent the commercials and demonetize the model of the very companies who took the risk to support it.
Basically, any major media company that buys into HTML 5 video tag will be strangled by the advocates who pushed it on them in the first place, monetarily. When the production studios offering the content find out that a free video application that plays their content without commercials (hypothetically) exists, they will pull out and said video site will collapse. Colloquially, it's a trap. Commercial content needs protection because those watching it on the web do not own it.
Furthermore, there will be a minor codec war. Firefox will probably only support theora, Safari will only use h.264 (Apple will flatly refuse to use theora), same for google chrome, perhaps. Then, Microsoft will support the tag in IE, but provide support for WMV in the video tag (and possibly h.264 if we're lucky, since it's now licensed in Windows 7). So, the video tag will slowly become just as crazy as the plugin-based video players of Web 1.0... except they will be written in slow javascript instead of the fast native code of the past. Primarily, because no one has agreed on how to do it so it isn't a standard.
Cory Doctorow seems to me to be a career activist, raised in an environment of "dismantling the system." This is the sort of person who's so blinded by ideology that he'll never choose to grasp anything outside of a contrary perspective to mainstream thinking. It's not that he doesn't--he can't.
This man didn't even complete college. His education consists of attending a "Free" "Alternative Education" High School before failing out of college and working at a series of non-profits. Most of the people posting on this thread are probably more qualified to make statements on this matter in both a theoretical and real world sense. Think about it. Have you taken economics classes? You win.
We're reading the words and ideas of someone who's been raised to just say things that are contrary. When Doctorow makes sweeping statements, it's best to back away and think through them. Sci-fi writers are good at sounding like they have authority. Sometimes, this leads to brilliant and revolutionary visions of the future in a superficial sense, other times you get Scientology.
I know he's got oodles of "internet cred," but I'd just like to state for the record that I don't choose to credit this man as an authority in this field and I think we should take anything he says with a grain of salt.
Okay, I am going to attempt to swim up river here and look at this analytically instead of joining into this insane self-righteous Mozilla/Google circle-jerk.
Let's go down the list:
Security - They're correct in asserting they have better phishing and malware protection. There's no dispute over this, actually. Their phishing protection is the best. IE 8 is extrremely sandboxed, perhaps even moreso than Firefox... so there's no glaring security holes, but note that they're not mentioning sandboxing so that they don't have to mention Chrome. They would lose to Chrome on that one.
Privacy - Although Chrome has an equivalent of inPrivate browsing, Firefox still has no built-in porn mode. Furthermore, inPrivate filtering seems to be IE 8 unique.
What is InPrivate Filtering?
InPrivate Filtering helps prevent website content providers from collecting information about sites you visit. Here's how it works.
Many webpages use contentâ"such as advertisements, maps, or web analysis toolsâ"from websites other than the one you are visiting. These websites are called content providers or third-party websites. When you visit a website with third-party content, some information about you is sent to the content provider. If a content provider offers content to a large number of the websites you visit, the content provider could develop a profile of your browsing preferences. Profiles of browsing preferences can be used in a variety of ways, including for analysis and serving targeted advertisements.
Usually this third-party content is displayed seamlessly, such as in an embedded video or image. The content appears to originate from the website you originally went to, so you may not know that another website might be able to see where you are surfing. Web analysis or web measurement tools report website visitors' browsing habits, and are not always obvious to you. While these tools can sometimes appear as visible content (such as a visitor counter, for example), they are often not visible to users, as is often the case with web beacons. Web beacons are typically single-pixel transparent images whose sole purpose is to track website usage, and they do not appear as visible content.
InPrivate Filtering works by analyzing web content on the webpages you visit, and if it sees the same content being used on a number of websites, it will give you the option to allow or block that content. You can also choose to have InPrivate Filtering automatically block any content provider or third-party website it detects, or you can choose to turn off InPrivate Filtering.
Althought I am sure Firefox can have this by extension, it's not there by default. Same goes for Chrome- this is a robust privacy feature which you would not find in minimalist Chrome.
Ease of Use - This is in the eye of the beholder, isn't it? Accelerators are pretty cool if you want to customize yourself a quick browsing environment... and they can be written by users. Think of them as modern less ugly web toolbars. This is only true if common users find this model easier than Firefox's wacky extension model or Chrome's nonexistent one.
Web Standards - They're correct, once more. They do support established standards better but fail to support as many popular emerging drafts. American web developers just love using bleeding edge emerging drafts in web design, don't they?
Developer Tools - This is a matter of opinion once more. Do Firefox or Chrome have a javascript profiler? If they don't, then they're not lying. Just stating an opinion on what's important.
Reliability - Okay, this is true again. Chrome likes to crash in a really ugly unrecoverable way and Firefox just takes out the entire browser when a page misbehaves. However, despite IE's tab isolation, it's still quite possible for a bad tab to take out the browser. So, this is correct as they state it but perhaps misleading.
Customizability - They are pushing forth their customization features as comparable
Android doesn't use X - nVidia have drivers for X and for Windows - but not for Android - so no one's choosing nVidia hardware for Android - so nVidia's discouraging people from using Android ....
It's not a big deal to write accelerated framebuffer drivers for a firm like Nvidia. Besides, X is not an enabler in this case but a massive hurdle to anyone trying to provide advanced graphics functionality on a linux-based platform, so to Nvidia, the lack of X on Android would actually be a plus. It's not such a big deal that they would license a Microsoft platform instead of using a "free" Google platform, either way. It might have more to do with the greater integration of technology like DirectX into the Windows Mobile platform as opposed to a lot of graphical (GL?) tricks in Android. Windows Mobile is a pretty mature system at this point vs. Android, so perhaps they believe they can squeeze more polish out of the system-- as well as customization and branding. If Nvidia is trying to push Tegra for mobile gaming, I would say Windows Mobile has a much brighter future for that then Android, given Linux's track record with libraries that support game development in general.
Perhaps that was redundant, though, given the content of the article..
And as soon as Moonlight catches up with Silverlight 2, Microsoft will have Silverlight 4 out. Let's face it, this is _exactly_ what everybody was predicting back when Moonlight started: endlessly running after Microsoft but never catching up, a perpetual existence as a "nice, but not useful for anything current" piece of software.
Or, the mono community can make use of the moonlight implementations they have finished. It's very useful and makes for a nice consistent way to develop dynamic web content. .NET is really a very nice technology to develop on. You also forget that much of silverlight is open source, so the implementation curve can be narrow. I doubt online applications will be riding the bleeding edge, anyway.
Moonlight supports Silverlight 1. Support for Silverlight 2 is in "preview".
Thus far the Moonlight project is "compatible" enough to tell you your version of Silverlight is out of date, and please upgrade.
Silverlight 1 and 2 are much more different than 2 and 3. The Mono development team has explain that implementing the full CLR for Moonlight 2 is one of the largest stages of the development process. For instance, Moonlight 2 Preview already has many Silverlight 3 features implemented. So, once Moonlight 2 is out, it will not be long before Moonlight 3.
Furthermore, I consider this the best pro-developer free software rant explaining the pros of mono in general:
http://www2.apebox.org/wordpress/rants/124/
All slashdot readers who support ODF are guilty of distorting reality.
We can pass it off as simple ignorance. It's just something to holler about, they aren't aware of the technical details.
The FSF are all goons.
That's precisely what they are. It's not like they write code... they do "software advocacy"... read: obstructionism. They're goons.
ODF is flawed and incomplete and only Microsoft has ever produced a compliant implementation.
Not true. CleverAge has implemented it properly. For the spreadsheet standard, Kspread did as well. You should have checked my sources. OpenOffice did not.
synopsus
Oh, this is your "synopsus", eh? Wow, another clever freetard swoops by to put me in my place. Scary.
As far as I can tell, the problem here is that the article is not bending the truth to match the usual reality-distorted pro-ODF bias expected by slashdot users and other FSF goons.
Let's start with this statement:
In the ODF article, Alex Brown bends the truth to make it seem like no one is supporting ODF, and that it is a flawed and incomplete standard.
It seems to be like he doesn't fail to bend the truth. It's a flawed and incomplete standard, in some ways it is vague, in others it's simply inconsistent.
Let's take tracked changes for instance, a feature in ODF 1.1 which pretends to be complete. The reality is that the standard is so vague and broken that the most popular implementation, Google Docs, ignores the standard entirely, implementing changes in their proprietary system. Microsoft simply solves the problem by disabling the functionality in order to avoid future breaking.
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2009/05/13/tracked-changes.aspx
Let's not talk about ODF 1.2 either, since its only a working draft.
So Microsoft was somehow able to do a perfect by the letter implementation of the ODF 1.1 (the current standard) spec, and yet they haven't got full interoperability with OpenOffice? It sounds an awful lot like Sun took a very liberal interpretation of their vague standard and are now standing by their wonky mess of source code (Ooo) as the standard-- similar to Solaris and POSIX. Thats unacceptable, ODF passed the standards bodies, not OpenOffice.org.
The fact that Microsoft could create one of the only correct implementations of the ODF standard and still break interoperability suggests that the ubiquity of this standard is largely overstated:
http://adjb.net/post/Notes-on-Document-Conformance-and-Portability-4.aspx
There are arguments to be made on the subject of digging through Sun's source code to make this vague standard work, but then ODF violates the FSF's very quote bashing MS-OOXML:
"For any standard it is essential that it is implementable by any third party without necessity of cooperation by another company"
Source: http://fsfe.org/documents/msooxml-questions
So, you can't make interoperable ODF without referencing OpenOffice because it is vague and incomplete... but it's not a complete standard unless you don't have to rely on the assistance of a certain corporation (Sun) to implement it properly?
It sounds to me like ODF is locking functionality to Sun's software the same way DOC locks functionality to Microsoft Office. MS-OOXML may be wordy, but it turns out that you need a lot of words to make a complete office standard. ODF is a paper tiger, end of story. The problem slashdot points out here is simply a lack of reality-distorting pro-ODF bias... this "whisper campaign" might be the seeping shadow of "reality" in the reality of writing a complete and interoperable standard escapes Sun--leaving them with something terse but heavily marketed with a vicious and aggressive activist campaign by angel advertisers who fancy themselves freedom fighters.
FOSS is simply better at solving complex problems (like "how to build an operating system") than closed source development.
But it hasn't built an operating system... it created a messy clone of unix.
Can someone name an operating system "Built by Open Source"? Something relevant, please.
Okay, I should not do this...
Why must everyone start out a reply like a High School kid deciding whether or not to drink a wine cooler at a party? Indulge yourself, moron.
So what enlightend pre 70's operating systems are you referring to?
Some hints are apreciated.
I don't know, MULTICS, LispVM, various time-sharing systems. They were age appropriate and forward-thinking.. for their time. Once UNIX came out, it was okay for a 70's system... then it never grew up or changed. People just kept using it and following all of its ridiculous dogmas. Basically, it put a vice on the nuts of computer science and managed to convince generations of computer scientists that the 1970's never ended. At least they never had to stress themselves learning new computing paradigms. I could scarcely imagine how much time and money society has squandered maintaining the UNIX operating system. As far as I can understand, it's been at a permanent state of 90% working.
And what is this stuff about Rome?
The good lawyers, bad mathematicians part?
The "nail every escaped and caught again slave to the cross" one?
The guys who institutetd christianity as state religion to save their sorry state from falling apart just to see it happen anyway?
Once again, some hints are apreciated.
Are you familiar with the dark ages? People had plenty of dogmatic religion, but they had lost the ability to even irrigate their crops. Despite the fact that society had previously built fantastic empires and achieved in all sorts of high fields of study, the church led them around as a religious barbarian horde, conquering every town and burning every library. That's UNIX in a nutshell... a horde of morons burning the libraries of computing progress (Apple, Microsoft, Amiga, Xerox, Be, etc.) to convince themselves and any they should come across that man is to remain in an ancient and sorry (but very Holy!) state... the 1970's can never end for computers... no, there is nothing after text-streams, weak debuggers, and conf files! Abandon hope!
This is why we are all so grateful to see the EU stepping in to level the playing field.
I agree. That is the appropriate position of government regulation. Corporations can't fail to be self-interested.
Who says? I say the OS is irrelevant today. You should be able to tun the web experience of your choice on it. If we are speaking specifically about Windows here, we definitely don't want their "web experience" integrated. Microsoft holds a monopoly on the desk top. We certainly don't want them extending this to the web. The danger of monoculture is another thing to avoid.
Okay. That's not what you want. Microsoft really can't take the position of ruining itself, though- that is, ceding the most important spot on the desktop, the browser. They will fight for the right to offer a browser on their desktop to remain relevant on the web.
I would hardly say things are moving towards a monoculture... all the third party browsers are gaining marketshare.
Careful there - that's a meme the MS shills are trying to establish ahead of the EU ruling, and I am sure you wouldn't want to consciously repeat that. In the first place, the vast majority of consumers receive an OS when they buy the computer, so whoever sells the computer will be happy to install a browser, or several browsers, or the browser of the user's choice. Computers sold to businesses often have tech support who should be able to install a browser without too much difficulty (meaning none at all). For any case not just covered, a friend with a browser downloaded onto a thumb drive will do the trick nicely. Absolutely no need at all for the OS to come with a browser.
It's absolutely true, though. The primary purpose of your computer now-a-days is to access the web. When you're offering a platform, you're also offering a supported web experience. It's an interesting question whether it's the same sort of thing today to offer a system without a supported browser.
By all means, there's no reason they can't offer multiple browsers, though. It's simply important that there's a supported browser available. It shouldn't be any problem to do what OS X did (I forget whether it was Jaguar or Panther) and simply bundle two browsers.
Now, even Apple ships Mac OS X with only Safari. The web browser is the face and flagship for the platform. No amount of hatred of Microsoft will change that. It's going to be tricky for them to define their platform while stepping around these rulings.
This sounds like an issue of cross-platform HTML 5 usage that is relevant to everyone involved. If you'll take some time to look at About:Opera sometime, you'll find Opera makes use of open source code, also.
Above anything else, Hakon is an open standards guy. Opera is part of the open standards community, simply not the open source community (unless you count things like dragonfly).
Microsoft told the Court that removing Explorer was impossible. They lied, but that's not the point. There's an attitude difference.
Well, explorer is pretty integrated into Windows, to be fair. Offering an operating system without a default web browser now-a-days is pretty sad... and explorer is your shell. But that's all technical details, I am sure they could create a gooned-up product to please the courts if they really wanted to.
Microsoft doesn't want you changing their OS. It's theirs, they are the only ones who get to decide what is good and what is bad.
Windows is just one system. Granted, it's a much more progressive and cohesive system, but it's just one example of a system. My main issue is not really Linux v. Windows. When you buy Windows, you're buying a professional product, not a hacked-up piece of inconsistent and undocumented crap. It's a different product with a different market.
In Unix the choice is given to the user. Change shells by simply typing the name of any of the half-dozen provided to you. If you don't like the ones that are there, write your own and distribute it.
And they all act like crappy 1980's terminals. It's so unbelievably amazing. It's just a bunch of implementations of the same sorry crap.
Forking is GOOD. When someone has a better idea in Unix, they release their better idea and people get to see it, to use it, to decide if it really is a better idea, and if it is, it will win out, and the old idea will be replaced. To do that in the Windows world, you have to hope Microsoft decides its a better idea and incorporates it for you. The eco-system is completely different.
And yet nothing ever seems to be accomplished. It's the same archaic system it was in the 80's built on the same concepts with the same interface and development tools. It's a freeze frame of decades-old computer science. I mean, people are still using X... it's just not going anywhere. Things could be so much better than this. It's like software Calvinism.
And if you think Unix prevents software from advancing, I'd like you to take a look at the World Wide Web, almost all of which was developed by that same open model you denounce. Not just TCP/IP and the web browser itself, but PHP, Ruby, all the new tools doing things that were never done before, come from those places you claim will never advance software.
What is Ruby doing that hasn't been done before? It's just doing what Java or Python did, but much much inferior in performance and resource usage. The open model is not the failure... UNIX is. A better open system could show up... and yet it doesn't. UNIX is an idealistic black hole. Its good-enough-ness cock-blocks any sort of progress or reimagination of computing. It is the lack of vision and creativity incarnate.
Sounds to me like you have your own reality distortion field.
Well hurr-duh-durr-durr-durr.
You have the analogy backwards. Corporations such as Microsoft are the church. Their modus operandi is to constrain their users into a narrow view of thinking while extracting as much in the way of resources as possible. Linux allows escape from that, much to the chagrin of Microsoft.
This is perhaps the weakest retort anyone has ever given me on slashdot.
You've completely forgotten that there is computing outside of Microsoft and Unix... and technologically, Microsoft has been far more progressive. Linux people are taking powerful energy-wasting modern desktop hardware and running them like 1970's dumb terminals. It's pathetic and regressive. The greatest contribution of the open source community to the modern computing world is to fill the web up with so many reports and messages in forums and mailing lists of buggy, undocumented, and misbehaving software that the open source ecosystem is beginning to rival porn as the biggest wad of useless data on the web.
The masturbatory self-congratulation of the open source community alone has turned the entire web into something between an AA meeting and a fetish club for computing sadists.
It's wonderful to see everyone parading around and celebrating the mastery of UNIX. I've seen mention of the fact that UNIX is better because its components can be replaced... and yet this isn't any different than Windows, which can have its explorer ripped out... and yet the morons chime on.
And for all this amazing progressive openness (which will solve everything someday), the Unix Hater's Handbook is still almost as completely applicable today as it was over a decade ago when it was written.
What does that say about progress? Basically, Linux is now doing the same thing UNIX has done historically, leverage enthusiasm from conservative admins to block all progress in system development. It is the ultimate curse of the "good enough" solution, demonstrating that the most important factor in the computing world is elitism. It's the cult of the inaccessible and unusable system. It is a blackhole of useless knowledge. It's a gaping wound in security, stability, and the progress of usability.
Indeed, UNIX is as bad as it ever has been... it's 2009 and people are pushing this hellish mess onto home users, now offering desktops like Ubuntu, swallowing resources, breaking at every turn, and all at once offering less lucidity and ease of use than 20 year old commercial solutions.
UNIX is the cancer that keeps computers "geeky" and keeps the power of computing out of the hands of regular users. UNIX is like the Church which dragged society out of the enlightenment of Rome and into the dark ages, filling peoples' heads with superstition and making progress a dark taboo. Now, thanks to the new popularity of linux, CS students are raised in unix-like environments, where dogmatic and archaic beliefs will prevent them from ever advancing software. They are trapped in streams of text and monoliths, doomed to repeat outdated principles of system design.
Here's to the new dark ages.
I can't speak for Linux, I'm a FreeBSD guy but I work of a large network company here in Sunnyvale, Ca. Our product is based on FreeBSD. I know for a FACT that Yahoo, Cicso, F5, Mira point, Ironport, etc. all of which are based here in America, use FreeBSD as the basis of their product and do most of their development in America.
I am not sure if I worded that very clearly, but I was under the impression that FreeBSD was more of an American product than linux in general.
This pretty much confirms it.
As I figure it, the systems are primarily developed in the following:
Linux - China, Russia, India
OpenBSD - Canada
Windows, Mac, Solaris, FreeBSD - United States
And I'm threatening to move to Linux.
Oh man... do you have any idea how outsourced/globalized the Linux market is? Linux as a commercial software product is almost entirely third world off-shored. Microsoft was sort of an outlier in doing so much development here in America.
Do you really think companies like Lynx or Motorola or Red Hat are doing their work here with American developers? They're not nearly profitable enough. If you want to be principled and supportive of the American business framework, then Linux is basically raping our software economy. Hell, even Solaris is more of an American product, and Sun is pretty globalized, as well.
I am fairly certain BSD is, as well.
All I am saying is that the Linux v. Microsoft argument is really really inappropriate here. It doesn't apply on any front. The American Linux development companies did this years ago. It's just a bigger deal when Microsoft does it.
If you are pro American industry and development that employs Americans and doesn't subvert out tax structure, you should be using Windows or Mac OS X. Seriously.
The problem is that a competitor installed an addon for a program without the user's permission. To me, it would be like Toyota mechanics tinkering around in the engine of my Mazda while I'm not home...and then giving me instructions on how to remove the parts they installed. I don't really care at all what it does or if it helps me or not.
I just don't know that it's the same, because it seems to me like this is more Microsoft acting as the platform maintainer than as a Firefox competitor. I think there's confusion here stemming from how expansive Microsoft is in this enterprise. Because one of my Microsoft's platform components is a web browser, it can be construed that they're sabotaging the competition. I just don't see that as any benefit, in this case. If Firefox is better on Windows than any other platform, then that's positive to Microsoft. They don't necessarily sell IE. I think it's more of a "value added" maneuver.
From an enterprise perspective, you don't want anything whatsoever installing on your company intranet without your permission. Granted, it is something you would likely want to go ahead and permit to install, but an IT professional should have complete control over his network.
I was talking about using ClickOnce WPF applications being used within the intranet, not them suddenly appearing on the intranet like a virus. I was speaking in reference to a company using firefox internally and wpf through the intranet.
In reality, the security issue probably has less to do with enterprise access control and more with the fact that offering firefox any system-level control over anything .NET would be insecure. A removal tool or methodology on a system level MUST be outside of firefox. A local uninstall button is about as rational as they could logically offer.
Even though I've been driving for over 20 years without having an accident, I wear my seat belt whenever I get into a car (as a driver or passenger). I'm quite happy that I've never needed it, but the fact that I've never needed it doesn't mean that I won't on my way home from work on Monday.
That's completely true, but I think the degree of caution you're taking is more akin to what you mention in the following paragraph.
It's been my experience that there is a very real trade-off between security and usability. However, I don't really feel that my preferences for web browsing have a major negative impact on my ability to use the Web. I guess this whole tangent is the result of me falling for the flamebait.
I am not trying to flame you. I just think that you're setting yourself up for the security situation of Windows 98, but in reality things have come pretty far. I keep my system up to date and pay attention every time tries to process elevate in UAC. When something seems suspicious, I investigate. Maybe I am unconsciously sandboxing more than other users, and that's a major factor.
I am trying to say your level of security is not invalid, per se, it's just excessive. You could win back some usability if you look into the security model of some new more isolated browsers (like Chrome, the Secure Safari) and be certain to simply run on a limited account and let UAC catch some of these problems. You can run as a limited user and process escalate with a password prompt like on mac or gksudo and enjoy a pretty certain level of security.
All I am trying to say is that the modern Windows security model is pretty good if used properly. It's as good as you'll get out of a consumer system.
Oh my god, that is so hard to read. You just made my comment and your snarky replies look like the Declaration of Independence.
They installed it without permission. Extensions change how firefox works. That's kind of the point of them. They add/alter functionality. In this case potentially opening a huge security hole, without permission.
It's not a security hole. There's no justification for making that claim. It's a more secure method of executing web-based .NET software than running native executables.
Then you know nothing of enterprise perspective. Enterprises can already roll out all the software they want to automatically. We roll out tons of applications all the time with no javascript, thanks.
It's a web application technology... so I was referring to web applications within an intranet.
It is a security issue. And my copy of XP is very much paid for Mr. Troll. I won't respond further because the rest of your post is just more inane trolling. (Please mod the troll to oblivion).
What is that, an incantation? You are such a dork.
But there is a brand whether or not it's intentionally created. The output of this "random barbarian horde of software developers" all falls under a single label, "open source", and therefore has the "open source" brand. He describes a brand as being "anyone's gut feeling". In other words, what is it that people think of when they hear "open source software"? Well, that's the brand. It may not have been shaped by anyone intentionally, but it still exists. So, he wants to shape it.
It is being branded, though- by Red Hat and Canonical and such. They each brand their own open source ecosystems, as does Mozilla. I believe the branding of open source should remain on a per project basis. As it stands in the mainstream, I would contend that open source is a "feature" moreso than a "brand".
It's not going to be a team effort...
However, props if you guys can distance yourself from GNU and the FSF. That will do wonders for notability.
Perhaps I can mount this little beast inside my hybrid-electric Hummer, Pimp My Ride Style!
Yo dawg, I heard you like irony...
And the MS Office team sure took Sun's ODF plugin positively. If every version of Java started stealth installing the Sun ODF plugin into installed versions of Office to fix the broken compatibility (and made it non-removable) don't you think Sysadmins on both sides of the aisle would be crying foul?
That wouldn't make any sense unless you were running a Sun supported platform... so, go back to metaphor school, cheesmo.
Quite a few sysadmins were surprised by this because checking FF plugins isn't part of the usual procedure on a test machine that you installed a new .NET framework patch to. Sure, fire up the cirtical .NET using apps, make sure everything's working. Groovy on all X test machines? Shoot the patch out to group 1. Day 2, group 2. Day 3, group 3 ... a week later user notices a new add-on. WTF, it's on all the machines!
Firefox is now an accepted part of the Windows ecosystem. Score one for Mozilla! It's time to add that to your test cases. Jeez, complaining because something unexpected occurred. What an uninspired lifestyle... this is what you people get paid to do!