This actually proves my point. The masses didn't do the HBGary hack. That was one or a few people who actually know what they're doing. The only reason Anonymous gets the credit is because the people responsible allowed the credit to go that way. The Sony, Amazon, and MasterCard DDoS attacks were performed by the masses, and they've all created varying levels of embarrassment for Anonymous due to their lack of success or the pointlessness of their targets.
::Sigh:: So, let's say I'm an evil corporation with some malice to direct -- I can claim I'm Anonymous... Hell, Anonymous could even be taking the blame for actions of the US government. Do you seriously think the US armed forces would infiltrate Facebook, but not IRC & 4chan? (Well, actually, they are pretty inept...)
Since anyone can become Anonymous, there's no authentication / identification -- You CAN'T claim Anonymous isn't responsible if Whomever IS responsible can claim that they are Anonymous!
It's also very annoying when Americans and Brits are trying to work together in an MMORPG, from my EVE experience. There are timezone problems. Every time my American friends were scheduling an evening op, I was unable to attend due to it being about three in the morning my zone. The times I was able to play, they were all at work.
I agree, but I live in Central North America and also work nights. Nothing but region lock prevents me from playing such restricted games with a few of my Brit friends... Timezones are a very very easy to overcome logistic issue -- If not, Explain Indian Help Desks.
"What the Kinect Could Be, But Probably Won't" -- Been there done that -- TFA should be called, "What Kinect & LIRC hackers have realized is really lame way to control a TV or computer."
The article says a qwerty keyboard in the living room is a bad idea, without explaining why. So, why?
Thanks.
Because Dvorak is so much nicer.
On a serious note, I don't see keyboards going away any time soon (or ever). I can type almost as fast as I think and 8 times as fast as I can get my voice recognition software to recognize.
What I am seeing more of is Computers. Everywhere. In portable phone & tablet form factors, as mp3 players, as game consoles, set-top boxes and routers... Even in the dash of some cars.
Once we realize that TVs are just big computer screens, and a general purpose "desktop" computer can perform all the tasks that we currently use the set-top boxes for, it won't seem too strange to just use your keyboard in the living room. Google TV already does this... For typing in a search or composing text/emails, nothing beats a keyboard. If I'm near my computer, I use it to send text messages.
Hell, I even have a wireless USB keyboard hooked up to my XBox360 -- It's much quicker/nicer than the overpriced controller mounted keyboard.
We'll always need a pointing device -- I prefer a Wacom pen-tablet/mouse pad, but I could see a Kinect filling this role. In fact, I've used my Kinect to control the mouse pointer, but the CPU usage is ridiculous when you consider how little my Wacom uses and how much more precise it is.
As for Kinect controlling the TV -- Well, I've done that. It wasn't that hard. I've been using LIRC to control my TV with Linux for quite some time. Linking LIRC to a gesture recognizer (libFreenect + OpenCV) was a piece of cake, but not really worth it. The Kinect is far less efficient and precise than either my truly universal remote (which I use to control both the TV & computer with via LIRC), or a simple keyboard / mouse combo. Seriously though -- WAY too much CPU consumption when you consider how little an IR remote, keyboard or mouse/pen tablet consumes...
Apple is doing so much better than its competition, this article is delusional. Apple has always maintained the look and feel of their products as something unique to them. They created it, why should other companies be allowed to copy them?
It's really quite simple to understand, please let me show you why.
Apple's designs are the bare minimal design that allows functionality (how many buttons on a iPhone/iPad?). When you make a design that is basically the bare minimum design that allows basic functionality it's hard for anyone else to make a simplistic design that doesn't seem similar -- If the requirements are the same, you'll end up with the same basic design...
Apple loves to try to own the bare minimum -- "Application Store", no, not minimal enough, just the bare minimum: "App Store". Now every other online software repository that sells applications is infringing because Apple used the most basic name they could? I don't think so...
Are all tablet simplistic form factor devices now infringing Apple's designs simply because apple made a simplistic design? I don't thing so. Are all UIs that have a few grids of icons infringing Apple's designs because apple made the most simple UI they could? I don't think so. If Apple built a car that Just Goes, would all other car manufacturers be infringing because their cars also focus on the going?
Q: What does this mean for the operating system software, Mac OS X Server? Will there be an upgrade for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion for Xserve?
A: Apple has made no announcement about its plans for Mac OS X Server software.
Q: What are the alternatives sources of hardware?
A: At the time of this post, there are no other suppliers of rack mounted hardware than can run Mac OS X Server.
Q: Can I run OS X Server in a virtual machine on other hardware?
A: At the time of this post, no. The license for OS X Server prohibits installation on hardware from any manufacturer except Apple.
Q: What are the alternatives for an organization dependent on Xserve?
A: You must plan to migrate to another hardware platform, either Apple’s (Mac Pro or Mac Mini) or transition to servers running Windows or Linux.
Maybe you're right, maybe Apple is so bloody cunning that they End of Life'd their server line to ensure that Apple is the only one who can use Apple software / hardware to provide Apple cloud services...
In any event, I won't be buying into their mono-culture with silent death hanging over my head. Giving controll of both the hardware and the software your business can run on seems sort of... well... dangerous. Just sayin'
Microsoft: We're sorry our product broke and a lot of people weren't able to get online.
Slashdot: BURN THE HERETIC!
Amazon: We're sorry our product broke and a lot of people weren't able to get online.
Slashdot: It's okay. Here, have a cookie.
Where have I heard this before:
"Our customers depend on our product line, but refuse to pay even more money to upgrade from XP to MS OS de jour" -- Fine, delay the security updates, the more viruses and downtime XP users suffer, the more incentive they'll have to upgrade... Why not move Office to the Cloud?
"Our customers depend on our media and information services, but refuse to pay even more money to access the premium entertainment media since our generic Internet service provides adequate entertainment" -- Fine, throttle and drop connections, the more unreliability and service downtime Internet users suffer, the more incentive they'll have to purchase our dedicated media solutions... Why not force Internet media companies to co-locate to extract money from both ends of our pipes?
"Our customers depend on our service, but refuse to pay even more money to upgrade from adequate uptime to 'Amazon Fail Proof' Services" -- Fine, gork some servers for a few hours, the more unavailability and downtime lower tier users suffer, the more incentive they'll have to upgrade... Just don't let the outage last long enough to devalue us too much though...
Oh, the cloud, isn't it wonderful? -- Whatever tier you are paying to access is almost adequate enough for the uptime & service you expect or require... Totally gives the saying, "The Sky is The Limit!", a whole new meaning, eh?
Balance and stability is more important than cool and crazy for long term fun.
I agreed with everything you said up to this point. There are many thousands of cool and crazy mods for Doom, the game is one of the most unbalanced of any multi-player game, and yet, after over 16 years, I'm still playing it, there are lots of modders still producing content for it, new modders joining the "scene" and even new source-ports & editors for Doom being released...
I've played Doom competitively, but mostly for fun; Hell, I've been playing "online" since before the Internet was available in my town -- local BBSes using custom IPX network simulator (yes, before Dwango).
Some game mods for Doom focus on balance, but most showcase how much fun and interesting levels & game-play you can squeeze out of a 2.5D game... All of this, and Doom doesn't even have an official map editor (or official map specs) -- We had to make them ourselves (I wrote one in Quick Pascal referencing only the Unofficial Doom FAQ to make my first.WADs -- ugh).
Clearly, multi-player & mod-ability + lack of any DRM, followed by releasing the source code are all far more important than balance and stability "for long term fun", IMO.
There are plenty of games that are fun. It's not surprising, that there's a niche for games that are a sport.
Football, volleyball, tennis, etc. - all are both games and a sport. What's wrong with some computer games also being an eSport?
What's wrong is that it's not physically demanding! Sports must demand a certain degree of physical prowess that only a rare few can obtain. What's next? Nerds playing board-games like checkers is a sport? Chess?! Oh... wait... That's right: Mental prowess, esp. speed of thought is required in both games of skill and (some) physical sports.
Silly me, here I was about to make an ass of myself like the GP did...
To be fair I find watching others play a game boring (esp. on TV). I would much rather enjoy a friendly game of football against my friends than watch someone else do so. I can not play against professional football players, boxers, etc.; They would crush and injure me. However, I CAN play mentally demanding games of skill like chess and RTS or FPS games against anyone -- even the pros...
That's the difference. If I see a move in a physical sport that is physically impossible for me to perform, I am not impressed... If I see a skillful trap sprung by a chess master, or "pro" RTS or FPS game player, I'm more impressed because that's something that I could have, but didn't think of.
I know I'll be going senile any day now, but the title doesn't parse.
Yep, today's the day! You're now senile. The second skin is implied. Here, I'll help you out if you'll just let me just stand on your lawn for a moment...
Synthetic Skin Could Replace Animal Subjects'
Note the correct apostrophe usage indicating a plural possessive.
Synthetic Skin Could Replace Animal Subjects' [Skin]
Synthetic Skin Could Be Used Instead of the Skin of Animal Subjects.
It's not your fault, really; I'm sure all the years of being subjected to the Slashdot editors' incorrect usage of apostrophes has worn a rut in your parser path -- The headline's correct punctuation just seemed wrong because it is out of place.
You just made my point - there *is* no difference.
Whether you use open or closed source software, End of Life issues affect them both, and to think otherwise is wilful ignorance - like the unnecessary trolling comment in the summary.
You are the only one exhibiting wilful ignorance (sic). At my company we use an older, unsupported ("End of Life") version of RHEL because certain systems haven't been tested with newer distributions yet.
The difference with open source software is that we can (and do) HIRE a team of on-site programmers that apply security and maintenance patches for us.
If we had gone with MS Windows instead of Linux, we would be forced to upgrade for no good reason -- It's cheaper to maintain our older code-base right now than to stop everything and migrate (we incrementally migrate when we choose, not when MS decides we need to pay more license fees -- See: short time span between Vista and 7 releases esp. compared to XP and Vista...)
Saying "there *is* no difference" is an outright lie -- Can we pay devs to patch XP after it's EOLed? Well?!?! Difference Discovered.
You are either willfully ignorant, or just plain uninformed.
methods and apparatus for information storage and retrieval using a hashing technique with external chaining and on-the-fly removal of expired data.
information storage and retrieval - nothing new here.
using a hashing technique - nothing new here
with external chaining - using what?
Using a linked list that the hash bucket points to -- hence, external chaining... Yep, nothing new here, standard hash table practice, as opposed to moving the collision to a different unoccupied bucket.
and on-the-fly removal of expired data - "on-the-fly" is a nice buzzword, but this is also nothing new.
I built a connection to player# firewall/database for a simple game server in 1996 (patent filed in 1997). I used a single hash table to store valid open connections and blocked connections. The packed IP address was used as the key (hashed), and an external linked list per hash bucket was used to resolve collisions. If more than one connection mapped to a bucket, it was added to the bucket's external linked list. Each connection (linked list item) had an IP address, port#, validity flag, and time-stamp; The later I used to automatically remove expired connections -- as I traversed the hash table. HOW IS THIS NOT BLOODY OBVIOUS to a professional skilled in the art of hash tables and faced with the problem of expiring bucket entries?! The patent is invalid.
The patent is clearly in violation of my prior art, and doubtlessly many thousands of other's. Fortunately, my source code for that BS game is closed -- no patent troll can figure out the method I'm using and sue me..... The patent (troll) system makes it more beneficial for me to hide innovation -- The opposite of it's intended goal. Linux source code is open, ergo, a broad target for trolls.
So apparently we can just mix and match random old techniques, and call it innovation and get it patented?
Yep. Apparently that's what they did. If someone else hasn't already patented it, you'll get a patent for it, no matter how obvious. The obviousness clause is not actually applied to patents. The patent database is searched for prior art, and applications granted if none is found.
What I find interesting is the "Method ANDApparatus" terms that all these software patents must use in order to link them to hardware and thus make them patentable -- Without the apparatus, they are not patentable.
A patent is public information, the detailed description is required to be published, no doubt in a textual form.
An "infringing" bit of open source software source code is simply a detailed description of a patent. Ergo, source code must not actually be infringing since it is not an apparatus, it is simply performing the same exact task that a patent claim performs -- describing the patented method in detail.
If a translation from the patent claim text to source code text is not an infringement, then a binary representation of such text must also not be an infringement -- A PDF displaying example source code that allegedly infringes a patent dose not itself infringe the patent -- It's just a document / file...
Compiling source code is merely translating it into another binary representation, just like translating a patent claim into example source code is not an infringement, and the PDF translation is not an infringement, a binary executable translation is not an infringement either!
Only when you add the apparatus to the method by running the software should the patent be enforcible. Prior to running the executable code the software is purely a description of the method employed.
A patent suit must not be able force the source code of a "patent infringing" open source project to be taken down -- Otherwise, we must also remove from public view ALL PUBLIC PATENT information.
I'm sorry -- I've read most of the above posts, and they are ALL doing it wrong.
So, how do I destroy sensitive data that's stored on a CD (or any other storage medium for that matter)?
I forget the decryption key. Storage medium stays INTACT -- Can even be reused if it's re-writable. Uses the least amount of energy, causes the least amount of pollution.
Look, if the data is precious enough that it warrants complete destruction at some point ENCRYPT IT YOU FOOL!
I use a key-ring based approach: The decryption keys are encrypted with my personal pass-phrase. This allows me to change my password without re-encrypting all of my data ( just the decryption keys for them ). Overwriting the decryption keys 1000 times with random numbers ensures that I can't be tortured into giving access to the data once destroyed this way -- I don't know what the actual decryption keys are, just my password that unlocked them.
Open source is good for software like this. On the other hand, it's not good for a competitive market like an MMO or RPG game. You could, in theory, argue that open source game engines are viable.
Yep, the game engine, and the physics engine, and the network platform, and the rendering API, and the anti-cheat code, and the installer -- Know what? It takes "a bunch of organizations" to create closed source MMOs and RPGs, or any game that's sufficiently complex anyway. Why re-invent the wheel when I can license Bink Video, Havoc, Unreal or ID-Tech, for much less and have a fully functional game to market in a fraction of the time?
Now, what if all that bad-ass tech was free-libre-open source? The customers win because of all the rampant competition, driving down costs (it's expensive to license commercial game components) -- The game developers win because my ultra-fast instancing algorithm would make all games that wanted to use it better...
Saying that "open source isn't good" for just about any purpose is just plain wrong...It's just software, its good anywhere other software is good.
Case & Point: I purchased and played Blood Rayne on PS2, and World of Goo for Win / Linux & Wii -- Both games used the open source Open Dynamics Engine as their physics engine. To hell with arguing "in theory", open source has been used, and will continue to be used in "competitive markets".
Now, if you're trying to say that open source development isn't a good model for closed source software -- I'd have to agree, "Open Source Closed Source Software" would be an outright contradiction in terms.
Another case & point: The Internet -- open source software runs the majority of this "competitive market".
Not only do I look into the source code of the build & deployment tools, but I also look into the source code of the standard libraries, and even the OS itself... but then again, I can't just blame my bugs on "the crappy MS Windows platform" -- my customer's know better.
It is still the same target. Having the icon change is an obvious attempt to try to legitimize a poor UI.
Negative. Having the users drag their devices to the trash is an obvious attempt to brainwash them into thinking their current hardware is garbage, and they need something new and shiny.
All who follow the mighty Jobs know that the only proper religious symbols are cmd-c, cmd-v
All who are true practitioners remember the arcane incantations ctrl+ins and ctrl+shift+ins...
Beware younglings, for ctrl+c or cmd+c may invoke the dark ones, who will promptly unleash their wrath and cancel your program depending on the gracious terminal that surrounds and gives meaning to your actions... At all times we must be mindful of the terminal, for it is the source of all, it permeates and binds our actions into reality.
When in full presence of the holy terminal you must tread lightly and always remember to show your respect by donning the venerable shift key's cloak of distinction when you utter either form of the standard incantations, lest you interrupt the dark one's slumber.
Only a false prophet claims there is but one true way. Only a fool believes such lies -- There are many paths to a single place depending on your origin.
Also note that the good enjoy a hearty embrace -- Be wary of those that when greeted with a friendly grasp of hand, later claim you have held them wrongly.
My very first job was a summer position at a general tech solution company doing grave-yard-shift data entry from 12am to 8am (well it was a summer job, but I kept at it when classes started again, and just slept from 4:pm to 7:pm on weekdays...).
Along with many other Juniors from the surrounding High Schools my task was to digitize Ford's vehicular part catalogs -- You know, when you ask for a part at the auto part store, and they immediately ask, "What make, model, year, etc?", and begin keying in a database query? Yeah, well, bunches of sleep deprived, caffeinated, underpaid teenagers entered that data manually, double check you got the right piece.
Anyhow, the employee agreement had a non compete clause -- WTF? For High Schoolers? Doing Data Entry? Really? Yes. Along with the non disclosure agreement covering the auto part serial #'s to year/make/model info (this is serious top secret business), was a clause stipulating that I wouldn't work for another Software company for 2 Years after I stopped working for them.
Naturally, I found those paragraphs ridiculous and offensive, especially since I wrote my own software in my (albeit limited) spare time and was hoping to enter the software market directly after highschool -- My data entry position had nothing to do with my own software products (Doom & Doom][ map editors &.EXE patchers -- ModCAD, distributed only on my "high speed" 14.4Kbps BBS, and advertised with in-game ads in the.WADs I made), so I just crossed out that whole section, initialed it, and signed the agreement.
I made sure the HR employee signed the agreement in front of me -- She didn't even notice the crossed out non-compete clause -- I could have written anything in that agreement!
5 months later I was called down to HR, and questioned about the modified contract. I expressed my disbelief that a High Schooler staffed data-entry position had any "trade secrets" to protect, and my disgust at the idea of limiting a High Schooler's job choices. I refused to sign a new contract -- The HR employee was taken aback, I suppose she had expected me to just sign the form and get back to work...
A few days later the head of HR contacted me about to discuss the modified employment contract -- I would not budge from my position on the issue... Flatly I stated, "Lady, look: I'm a Teenager, I graduate this year; My whole life is ahead of me, and you would have me black-out the section of my immediate future that looks most promising -- I'd sooner castrate myself than agree to those terms." I was asked to calm down, be reasonable, and meet her in-person the following day... So I did calm down, and I reasoned my options rationally.
The next day when I met the Queen Sleaze of Uni. Comp. Sys. Inc. H.R. I handed her my letter of resignation, effective immediately. Later, during my follow-up "exit interview", I informed the interviewer that Pizza Hut had more agreeable employment terms, and offered a higher hourly pay, and that I could put in a good word for her if she liked: "My best friend is the manager."
Moral of the story: You don't have to sign those stupid agreements -- If I had, I wouldn't have been able to start my own software company after High School and put myself through college. Just because the boilerplate is in the agreement doesn't mean it should be! Just cross out and initial ANY disagreeable part of ANY contract. They aren't written in stone, and may even go wholly unnoticed for months, years, or your entire employ.
eh, I don't know anyone that cares about that. Myself, I just wonder why it's not LibreOficina With the OO name back we should rename it to be more similar to the LO name... The OO branch can be called: <b>LibreCachot</b> (French, for the sort of offices you'll find at Oracle.)
Excuse the self reply, but a colleague pointed out an interesting point: "Securing Everything means no caching"
Interesting, yes, but totally incorrect. Data that is to be cached can be signed instead of obfuscated via encryption, thus yielding security AND caching capabilities. Web browsers currently warn that a page contains both secure (encrypted) and unsecure (non encrypted) items. If a third option of, "signed but not encrypted", were available, the page could would no-longer contain both secure and insecure items -- Hell, all of my GIT commits use this type of security already...
The global CA infustructure is used for a lot more than just securing public web sites.
To understand if there is even a problem you first need to check the key usage/EKUs of these certs to see in what context the certificates are allowed to be used.
The global CA "infustructure" (sic), used in any scenario, fails to ensure the trust is certified, absolutely.
It's down-right broken, should be abandoned IMMEDIATELY!!!.
Wait! Before you mod me troll or skip past this thinking I'm a nut-job, ask yourself this: Does a "valid" cert PROVE that the domain named in the cert actually requested the cert be made? Well, does it?
NO. It does not!
A "valid" cert only proves that a "trusted" authority has signed the certificate. A "valid" cert in no way ensures that the "trusted" authority actually had the permission of the domain owner to issue the certificate.
This system can therefore not be trusted AT ALL.
The main problem is two-fold: 1) DNS is unsecure. 2) People want to charge extra for a damn public / private key chain -- a cert.
I propose, as part of DNS registration, the domain owner must create a public / private key pair and register their public key.
All requests for SSL certificates must then also be either:
1) signed FIRST by the private key of the domain owner, or...
2) done away with completely as an obsolete technology -- The domain's registered public key can be used.
The point is this: Time and time again we find that starting with a 100% unsecured system, then adding in layers of security is a faulty, insecure design. Eg: Some MS OSes, firewalls that are fully open except "bad" ports, email SPAM (no sender verification required, no end to SPAM in sight), the list goes on...
We're starting out with an unsecured network, then adding in security layers on top -- WTF? Why not just require, that after a period of adjustment has passed, all DNS & Internent packets be encrypted by the domain owner's private/public key pair? The routers don't have to be upgraded to support this -- they still just pass along the bits, but the end points can then be secured.
While protecting IP addresses is the immediate concern for many users, DNSSEC can protect other information such as general-purpose cryptographic certificates stored in CERT records in the DNS. RFC 4398 describes how to distribute these certificates, including those for email, making it possible to use DNSSEC as a worldwide public key infrastructure for email.
Bang: No more spam. Bang: no more SSL certs that weren't requested by the domain owner. Bang: no more SSL certs for unqualified names on the Internet (INTRAnet is a different matter -- set you devices to trust whatever you want, as always).
TFA is just another nail in the coffin for unsecured DNS & the whole untrustable SSL CA security theater.
My dotcom boss used to say "DOS is dead" when I was using command line in Windows NT3.5. Hmmph.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
1. Without Disk Operating Systems we would have no general purpose computers -- Windows / Unix & Linux are all DOS's. The D has been generalized to include Hard as well as soft disks, as well as non-volatile RAM -- persistent RAM Disk, if you will. The Disk in DOS meant that the OS was loaded from storage that's NOT HARD-CODED into the system, (software OS, not hardware based) at the time that was floppy disks... Today's computers all have "D"OSes, even the "hard-coded" parts are flashable software in most cases.
2. The risk of being subjected to a Denial of Service attact is higher than ever given the larger number of devices and applications connected to the Internet since the "dot com" era.
If they stuck to that mentality with a vengeance, we wouldnt have any of the following:
New tab button
Tab tearing / reorganization
Session restore
Pinned tabs
Undo Close tab
And more.
Perhaps you dont remember the days when firefox really did gobble ram down, because TabMixPlus was an utter pig, or when the 20+ addins you needed to get to today's level of functionality were unstable, leaky, and a PITA to update.
Somehow folks dont complain about all the functionality in Opera; but then I suppose the grass is always greener.
Oh, I remember... Do I ever. I make plugins & web apps. Broken standards, ridiculously inefficient web-enabled languages and poor rendering support, falling back to tables of images -- Jumping through all sorts of hoops just to get things to look decent and actually run without chugging along at a snail's pace... Sadly we just had to use whatever crap language (javascript) because that's what's available, not because we wanted to, or because it was any good.
Hey, wait, that's right now.
A fundamentalist, I am not. I'm not saying to never add new features, but Facebook & Twitter? Seriously? Yeah, that's something that I really need in A Web Browser. Hint: FACEBOOK.COM & TWITTER.COM -- already exist!
To be fair: browsers are a SHITTY application platform. No. I develop web "apps". You can't tell me otherwise, I've got the battle scars to prove it. I have to deal with the shittyness constantly. There's no user session state -- Oh, right, cookies -- limited & hacked in / build your own. Windowing API, build your own. Cross platform? Yep, you'll be downgrading some neat features to hit that average browser feature support mark. Persistent connections, nope, we can do polling or long lived requests (AJAX / COMET) but that's a hack & taxes the servers -- we're promised connections in websockets, which we can use someday, I hope. Still looks bleak on the Video standardization front.
No matter how hard we try, unless the website / web app uses canvas exclusively it won't look the same on every browser / OS. HTML5 is over 8 years late IMHO -- yes 8, yeah, YEARS! 8 months is huge in tech terms. In the interim we've been making due slapping things together with duct-tape & crappy scripting languages. Oh, faster script performance? Why not compile JS to machine code and run it?! (Yeah, that's one reason why browsers are insecure -- we'll run just about any DATA as CODE). Basically EVERYTHING you do on an interactive website is by way of a myriad of flaky hacked together kludges, and we all just have to deal with it -- and by it I mean the shittyness.
Take a document rendering engine, add a macro language (JavaScript) to automate / animate a few things -- There, now hack together applications. For your next project: Here's a weed-eater a bicycle, and some polystyrene -- Go build me a taxi cab. Either will be inefficient, slow, unwieldy, and flaky as all get-out. You're complaining about flaky plugins!? Ha! THOSE are STABLE by our web standards...
I can see why Facebook or Twitter would rather have a full-on plugin... Hey, guess what else plugins can do? They can see every flippin' website you visit. Sure, the users could just install the plugins themselves Hmm, but If it's an external plugin, Mozilla doesn't get the revenue...
Ah, now ad revenue -- THAT will get a feature integration right in...(google search: included by default, not much else is) --- until --- Hey, guess what? Facebook and Twitter are coming pre-installed into Firefox! I wonder why? Oh, usability, right -- You just keep telling yourself that.
not everyone needs a browser on their Linux (not everyone needs social network integration in their Firefox).
Not everyone needs browser tabs--like my parents, who to my knowledge don't know how to visit multiple sites simultaneously. When a large enough fraction of users benefit from a feature more than the feature hurts other users, it should probably be included.
Keep in mind that one of the reasons why Firefox is so great is that it has addons / plugins. It can be a lean download, and extended till your heart's content after the fact... There's no good reason to include a damn social network plugin by default, IMHO.
They don't include DownThemAll (download accelerator) by default, even though anyone who downloads files would benefit from that plugin's features -- Who doesn't want faster downloads?! Bandwidth is hardly an argument against acceleration -- you'll end up getting the same number of bits either way, and DTA has rate / connection limiting, so congestion isn't an issue.
The point is that given the amazing plugin support in FF, there's no real usability reason to include ANY social plugins by default.
I can see adding Tabbed browsing, or vertical tabs plugin, or multi-touch gestures, or some other core functionality features -- Like the identity management, But comparing social apps to tabs is ridiculous. If you want to argue for "social" integration, Why isn't an IRC / Instant messaging client built in? Guess--- Right, Because There's a plugin, no reason to add it by default, even though Chat is a core Internet feature, like e-mail -- Which they also don't include in Firefox... Mozilla took out the e-mail suite a long time ago to make FF snappier. How many people on the web DON'T use email?
Come on, use your brain. Of all the things to include they picked Facebook and Twitter... now, why do you suppose that is?
I am certain that the deciding factor was ad revenue partnerships, not better user interface or core feature integration. You can argue otherwise, but that doesn't make it any less obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
This actually proves my point. The masses didn't do the HBGary hack. That was one or a few people who actually know what they're doing. The only reason Anonymous gets the credit is because the people responsible allowed the credit to go that way. The Sony, Amazon, and MasterCard DDoS attacks were performed by the masses, and they've all created varying levels of embarrassment for Anonymous due to their lack of success or the pointlessness of their targets.
::Sigh:: So, let's say I'm an evil corporation with some malice to direct -- I can claim I'm Anonymous... Hell, Anonymous could even be taking the blame for actions of the US government. Do you seriously think the US armed forces would infiltrate Facebook, but not IRC & 4chan? (Well, actually, they are pretty inept...)
Since anyone can become Anonymous, there's no authentication / identification -- You CAN'T claim Anonymous isn't responsible if Whomever IS responsible can claim that they are Anonymous!
It's also very annoying when Americans and Brits are trying to work together in an MMORPG, from my EVE experience. There are timezone problems. Every time my American friends were scheduling an evening op, I was unable to attend due to it being about three in the morning my zone. The times I was able to play, they were all at work.
I agree, but I live in Central North America and also work nights. Nothing but region lock prevents me from playing such restricted games with a few of my Brit friends... Timezones are a very very easy to overcome logistic issue -- If not, Explain Indian Help Desks.
"What the Kinect Could Be, But Probably Won't" -- Been there done that -- TFA should be called, "What Kinect & LIRC hackers have realized is really lame way to control a TV or computer."
The article says a qwerty keyboard in the living room is a bad idea, without explaining why. So, why?
Thanks.
Because Dvorak is so much nicer.
On a serious note, I don't see keyboards going away any time soon (or ever). I can type almost as fast as I think and 8 times as fast as I can get my voice recognition software to recognize.
What I am seeing more of is Computers. Everywhere. In portable phone & tablet form factors, as mp3 players, as game consoles, set-top boxes and routers... Even in the dash of some cars.
Once we realize that TVs are just big computer screens, and a general purpose "desktop" computer can perform all the tasks that we currently use the set-top boxes for, it won't seem too strange to just use your keyboard in the living room. Google TV already does this... For typing in a search or composing text/emails, nothing beats a keyboard. If I'm near my computer, I use it to send text messages.
Hell, I even have a wireless USB keyboard hooked up to my XBox360 -- It's much quicker/nicer than the overpriced controller mounted keyboard.
We'll always need a pointing device -- I prefer a Wacom pen-tablet/mouse pad, but I could see a Kinect filling this role. In fact, I've used my Kinect to control the mouse pointer, but the CPU usage is ridiculous when you consider how little my Wacom uses and how much more precise it is.
As for Kinect controlling the TV -- Well, I've done that. It wasn't that hard. I've been using LIRC to control my TV with Linux for quite some time. Linking LIRC to a gesture recognizer (libFreenect + OpenCV) was a piece of cake, but not really worth it. The Kinect is far less efficient and precise than either my truly universal remote (which I use to control both the TV & computer with via LIRC), or a simple keyboard / mouse combo. Seriously though -- WAY too much CPU consumption when you consider how little an IR remote, keyboard or mouse/pen tablet consumes...
Apple is doing so much better than its competition, this article is delusional. Apple has always maintained the look and feel of their products as something unique to them. They created it, why should other companies be allowed to copy them?
It's really quite simple to understand, please let me show you why.
Apple's designs are the bare minimal design that allows functionality (how many buttons on a iPhone/iPad?). When you make a design that is basically the bare minimum design that allows basic functionality it's hard for anyone else to make a simplistic design that doesn't seem similar -- If the requirements are the same, you'll end up with the same basic design...
Apple loves to try to own the bare minimum -- "Application Store", no, not minimal enough, just the bare minimum: "App Store". Now every other online software repository that sells applications is infringing because Apple used the most basic name they could? I don't think so...
Are all tablet simplistic form factor devices now infringing Apple's designs simply because apple made a simplistic design? I don't thing so. Are all UIs that have a few grids of icons infringing Apple's designs because apple made the most simple UI they could? I don't think so. If Apple built a car that Just Goes, would all other car manufacturers be infringing because their cars also focus on the going?
Let's just see how they expand their cloud services and see if it wants to eat at Amazon's other ventures.
Fanboi much?
Apple has made the decision, fairly quietly, that they are no longer going to sell Xserve server products past Jan 2011.
FAQs for the Xserve End Of Life
Q: Where can I see what Apple has announced about Xserve?
A: The official announcement is here: http://www.apple.com/xserve/resources.html
Guess what? That Apple URL -- gone.
Q: What does this mean for the operating system software, Mac OS X Server? Will there be an upgrade for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion for Xserve?
A: Apple has made no announcement about its plans for Mac OS X Server software.
Q: What are the alternatives sources of hardware?
A: At the time of this post, there are no other suppliers of rack mounted hardware than can run Mac OS X Server.
Q: Can I run OS X Server in a virtual machine on other hardware?
A: At the time of this post, no. The license for OS X Server prohibits installation on hardware from any manufacturer except Apple.
Q: What are the alternatives for an organization dependent on Xserve?
A: You must plan to migrate to another hardware platform, either Apple’s (Mac Pro or Mac Mini) or transition to servers running Windows or Linux.
Maybe you're right, maybe Apple is so bloody cunning that they End of Life'd their server line to ensure that Apple is the only one who can use Apple software / hardware to provide Apple cloud services...
In any event, I won't be buying into their mono-culture with silent death hanging over my head. Giving controll of both the hardware and the software your business can run on seems sort of... well... dangerous. Just sayin'
Microsoft: We're sorry our product broke and a lot of people weren't able to get online. Slashdot: BURN THE HERETIC! Amazon: We're sorry our product broke and a lot of people weren't able to get online. Slashdot: It's okay. Here, have a cookie.
Where have I heard this before:
"Our customers depend on our product line, but refuse to pay even more money to upgrade from XP to MS OS de jour" -- Fine, delay the security updates, the more viruses and downtime XP users suffer, the more incentive they'll have to upgrade... Why not move Office to the Cloud?
"Our customers depend on our media and information services, but refuse to pay even more money to access the premium entertainment media since our generic Internet service provides adequate entertainment" -- Fine, throttle and drop connections, the more unreliability and service downtime Internet users suffer, the more incentive they'll have to purchase our dedicated media solutions... Why not force Internet media companies to co-locate to extract money from both ends of our pipes?
"Our customers depend on our service, but refuse to pay even more money to upgrade from adequate uptime to 'Amazon Fail Proof' Services" -- Fine, gork some servers for a few hours, the more unavailability and downtime lower tier users suffer, the more incentive they'll have to upgrade... Just don't let the outage last long enough to devalue us too much though...
Oh, the cloud, isn't it wonderful? -- Whatever tier you are paying to access is almost adequate enough for the uptime & service you expect or require... Totally gives the saying, "The Sky is The Limit!", a whole new meaning, eh?
Balance and stability is more important than cool and crazy for long term fun.
I agreed with everything you said up to this point. There are many thousands of cool and crazy mods for Doom, the game is one of the most unbalanced of any multi-player game, and yet, after over 16 years, I'm still playing it, there are lots of modders still producing content for it, new modders joining the "scene" and even new source-ports & editors for Doom being released...
I've played Doom competitively, but mostly for fun; Hell, I've been playing "online" since before the Internet was available in my town -- local BBSes using custom IPX network simulator (yes, before Dwango).
Some game mods for Doom focus on balance, but most showcase how much fun and interesting levels & game-play you can squeeze out of a 2.5D game... All of this, and Doom doesn't even have an official map editor (or official map specs) -- We had to make them ourselves (I wrote one in Quick Pascal referencing only the Unofficial Doom FAQ to make my first .WADs -- ugh).
Clearly, multi-player & mod-ability + lack of any DRM, followed by releasing the source code are all far more important than balance and stability "for long term fun", IMO.
There are plenty of games that are fun. It's not surprising, that there's a niche for games that are a sport.
Football, volleyball, tennis, etc. - all are both games and a sport. What's wrong with some computer games also being an eSport?
What's wrong is that it's not physically demanding! Sports must demand a certain degree of physical prowess that only a rare few can obtain. What's next? Nerds playing board-games like checkers is a sport? Chess?! Oh... wait... That's right: Mental prowess, esp. speed of thought is required in both games of skill and (some) physical sports.
Silly me, here I was about to make an ass of myself like the GP did...
To be fair I find watching others play a game boring (esp. on TV). I would much rather enjoy a friendly game of football against my friends than watch someone else do so. I can not play against professional football players, boxers, etc.; They would crush and injure me. However, I CAN play mentally demanding games of skill like chess and RTS or FPS games against anyone -- even the pros...
That's the difference. If I see a move in a physical sport that is physically impossible for me to perform, I am not impressed... If I see a skillful trap sprung by a chess master, or "pro" RTS or FPS game player, I'm more impressed because that's something that I could have, but didn't think of.
I know I'll be going senile any day now, but the title doesn't parse.
Yep, today's the day! You're now senile. The second skin is implied. Here, I'll help you out if you'll just let me just stand on your lawn for a moment...
Synthetic Skin Could Replace Animal Subjects'
Note the correct apostrophe usage indicating a plural possessive.
Synthetic Skin Could Replace Animal Subjects' [Skin]
Synthetic Skin Could Be Used Instead of the Skin of Animal Subjects.
It's not your fault, really; I'm sure all the years of being subjected to the Slashdot editors' incorrect usage of apostrophes has worn a rut in your parser path -- The headline's correct punctuation just seemed wrong because it is out of place.
You just made my point - there *is* no difference.
Whether you use open or closed source software, End of Life issues affect them both, and to think otherwise is wilful ignorance - like the unnecessary trolling comment in the summary.
You are the only one exhibiting wilful ignorance (sic). At my company we use an older, unsupported ("End of Life") version of RHEL because certain systems haven't been tested with newer distributions yet.
The difference with open source software is that we can (and do) HIRE a team of on-site programmers that apply security and maintenance patches for us.
If we had gone with MS Windows instead of Linux, we would be forced to upgrade for no good reason -- It's cheaper to maintain our older code-base right now than to stop everything and migrate (we incrementally migrate when we choose, not when MS decides we need to pay more license fees -- See: short time span between Vista and 7 releases esp. compared to XP and Vista...)
Saying "there *is* no difference" is an outright lie -- Can we pay devs to patch XP after it's EOLed? Well?!?! Difference Discovered.
You are either willfully ignorant, or just plain uninformed.
methods and apparatus for information storage and retrieval using a hashing technique with external chaining and on-the-fly removal of expired data.
information storage and retrieval - nothing new here. using a hashing technique - nothing new here with external chaining - using what?
Using a linked list that the hash bucket points to -- hence, external chaining... Yep, nothing new here, standard hash table practice, as opposed to moving the collision to a different unoccupied bucket.
and on-the-fly removal of expired data - "on-the-fly" is a nice buzzword, but this is also nothing new.
I built a connection to player# firewall/database for a simple game server in 1996 (patent filed in 1997). I used a single hash table to store valid open connections and blocked connections. The packed IP address was used as the key (hashed), and an external linked list per hash bucket was used to resolve collisions. If more than one connection mapped to a bucket, it was added to the bucket's external linked list. Each connection (linked list item) had an IP address, port#, validity flag, and time-stamp; The later I used to automatically remove expired connections -- as I traversed the hash table. HOW IS THIS NOT BLOODY OBVIOUS to a professional skilled in the art of hash tables and faced with the problem of expiring bucket entries?! The patent is invalid.
The patent is clearly in violation of my prior art, and doubtlessly many thousands of other's. Fortunately, my source code for that BS game is closed -- no patent troll can figure out the method I'm using and sue me..... The patent (troll) system makes it more beneficial for me to hide innovation -- The opposite of it's intended goal. Linux source code is open, ergo, a broad target for trolls.
So apparently we can just mix and match random old techniques, and call it innovation and get it patented?
Yep. Apparently that's what they did. If someone else hasn't already patented it, you'll get a patent for it, no matter how obvious. The obviousness clause is not actually applied to patents. The patent database is searched for prior art, and applications granted if none is found.
What I find interesting is the "Method AND Apparatus" terms that all these software patents must use in order to link them to hardware and thus make them patentable -- Without the apparatus, they are not patentable.
A patent is public information, the detailed description is required to be published, no doubt in a textual form.
An "infringing" bit of open source software source code is simply a detailed description of a patent. Ergo, source code must not actually be infringing since it is not an apparatus, it is simply performing the same exact task that a patent claim performs -- describing the patented method in detail.
If a translation from the patent claim text to source code text is not an infringement, then a binary representation of such text must also not be an infringement -- A PDF displaying example source code that allegedly infringes a patent dose not itself infringe the patent -- It's just a document / file...
Compiling source code is merely translating it into another binary representation, just like translating a patent claim into example source code is not an infringement, and the PDF translation is not an infringement, a binary executable translation is not an infringement either!
Only when you add the apparatus to the method by running the software should the patent be enforcible. Prior to running the executable code the software is purely a description of the method employed.
A patent suit must not be able force the source code of a "patent infringing" open source project to be taken down -- Otherwise, we must also remove from public view ALL PUBLIC PATENT information.
Distribution of a PDF that descri
I'm sorry -- I've read most of the above posts, and they are ALL doing it wrong.
So, how do I destroy sensitive data that's stored on a CD (or any other storage medium for that matter)?
I forget the decryption key. Storage medium stays INTACT -- Can even be reused if it's re-writable. Uses the least amount of energy, causes the least amount of pollution.
Look, if the data is precious enough that it warrants complete destruction at some point ENCRYPT IT YOU FOOL!
I use a key-ring based approach: The decryption keys are encrypted with my personal pass-phrase. This allows me to change my password without re-encrypting all of my data ( just the decryption keys for them ). Overwriting the decryption keys 1000 times with random numbers ensures that I can't be tortured into giving access to the data once destroyed this way -- I don't know what the actual decryption keys are, just my password that unlocked them.
Open source is good for software like this. On the other hand, it's not good for a competitive market like an MMO or RPG game. You could, in theory, argue that open source game engines are viable.
Yep, the game engine, and the physics engine, and the network platform, and the rendering API, and the anti-cheat code, and the installer -- Know what? It takes "a bunch of organizations" to create closed source MMOs and RPGs, or any game that's sufficiently complex anyway. Why re-invent the wheel when I can license Bink Video, Havoc, Unreal or ID-Tech, for much less and have a fully functional game to market in a fraction of the time?
Now, what if all that bad-ass tech was free-libre-open source? The customers win because of all the rampant competition, driving down costs (it's expensive to license commercial game components) -- The game developers win because my ultra-fast instancing algorithm would make all games that wanted to use it better...
Saying that "open source isn't good" for just about any purpose is just plain wrong...It's just software, its good anywhere other software is good.
Case & Point: I purchased and played Blood Rayne on PS2, and World of Goo for Win / Linux & Wii -- Both games used the open source Open Dynamics Engine as their physics engine. To hell with arguing "in theory", open source has been used, and will continue to be used in "competitive markets".
Now, if you're trying to say that open source development isn't a good model for closed source software -- I'd have to agree, "Open Source Closed Source Software" would be an outright contradiction in terms.
Another case & point: The Internet -- open source software runs the majority of this "competitive market".
Not only do I look into the source code of the build & deployment tools, but I also look into the source code of the standard libraries, and even the OS itself... but then again, I can't just blame my bugs on "the crappy MS Windows platform" -- my customer's know better.
It is still the same target. Having the icon change is an obvious attempt to try to legitimize a poor UI.
Negative. Having the users drag their devices to the trash is an obvious attempt to brainwash them into thinking their current hardware is garbage, and they need something new and shiny.
...the Chinese rockets have achieved 75 consecutive successful launches were conducted.
So, were they achieved or simply conducted? Perhaps they achieved 75 successful conductors to launch...
All who follow the mighty Jobs know that the only proper religious symbols are cmd-c, cmd-v
All who are true practitioners remember the arcane incantations ctrl+ins and ctrl+shift+ins...
Beware younglings, for ctrl+c or cmd+c may invoke the dark ones, who will promptly unleash their wrath and cancel your program depending on the gracious terminal that surrounds and gives meaning to your actions... At all times we must be mindful of the terminal, for it is the source of all, it permeates and binds our actions into reality.
When in full presence of the holy terminal you must tread lightly and always remember to show your respect by donning the venerable shift key's cloak of distinction when you utter either form of the standard incantations, lest you interrupt the dark one's slumber.
Only a false prophet claims there is but one true way. Only a fool believes such lies -- There are many paths to a single place depending on your origin.
Also note that the good enjoy a hearty embrace -- Be wary of those that when greeted with a friendly grasp of hand, later claim you have held them wrongly.
This is common at all major tech companies
Yes, and even the little ones.
My very first job was a summer position at a general tech solution company doing grave-yard-shift data entry from 12am to 8am (well it was a summer job, but I kept at it when classes started again, and just slept from 4:pm to 7:pm on weekdays...).
Along with many other Juniors from the surrounding High Schools my task was to digitize Ford's vehicular part catalogs -- You know, when you ask for a part at the auto part store, and they immediately ask, "What make, model, year, etc?", and begin keying in a database query? Yeah, well, bunches of sleep deprived, caffeinated, underpaid teenagers entered that data manually, double check you got the right piece.
Anyhow, the employee agreement had a non compete clause -- WTF? For High Schoolers? Doing Data Entry? Really? Yes. Along with the non disclosure agreement covering the auto part serial #'s to year/make/model info (this is serious top secret business), was a clause stipulating that I wouldn't work for another Software company for 2 Years after I stopped working for them.
Naturally, I found those paragraphs ridiculous and offensive, especially since I wrote my own software in my (albeit limited) spare time and was hoping to enter the software market directly after highschool -- My data entry position had nothing to do with my own software products (Doom & Doom][ map editors & .EXE patchers -- ModCAD, distributed only on my "high speed" 14.4Kbps BBS, and advertised with in-game ads in the .WADs I made), so I just crossed out that whole section, initialed it, and signed the agreement.
I made sure the HR employee signed the agreement in front of me -- She didn't even notice the crossed out non-compete clause -- I could have written anything in that agreement!
5 months later I was called down to HR, and questioned about the modified contract. I expressed my disbelief that a High Schooler staffed data-entry position had any "trade secrets" to protect, and my disgust at the idea of limiting a High Schooler's job choices. I refused to sign a new contract -- The HR employee was taken aback, I suppose she had expected me to just sign the form and get back to work...
A few days later the head of HR contacted me about to discuss the modified employment contract -- I would not budge from my position on the issue... Flatly I stated, "Lady, look: I'm a Teenager, I graduate this year; My whole life is ahead of me, and you would have me black-out the section of my immediate future that looks most promising -- I'd sooner castrate myself than agree to those terms." I was asked to calm down, be reasonable, and meet her in-person the following day... So I did calm down, and I reasoned my options rationally.
The next day when I met the Queen Sleaze of Uni. Comp. Sys. Inc. H.R. I handed her my letter of resignation, effective immediately. Later, during my follow-up "exit interview", I informed the interviewer that Pizza Hut had more agreeable employment terms, and offered a higher hourly pay, and that I could put in a good word for her if she liked: "My best friend is the manager."
Moral of the story: You don't have to sign those stupid agreements -- If I had, I wouldn't have been able to start my own software company after High School and put myself through college. Just because the boilerplate is in the agreement doesn't mean it should be! Just cross out and initial ANY disagreeable part of ANY contract. They aren't written in stone, and may even go wholly unnoticed for months, years, or your entire employ.
eh, I don't know anyone that cares about that. Myself, I just wonder why it's not LibreOficina
With the OO name back we should rename it to be more similar to the LO name... The OO branch can be called: <b>LibreCachot</b> (French, for the sort of offices you'll find at Oracle.)
Excuse the self reply, but a colleague pointed out an interesting point: "Securing Everything means no caching"
Interesting, yes, but totally incorrect. Data that is to be cached can be signed instead of obfuscated via encryption, thus yielding security AND caching capabilities. Web browsers currently warn that a page contains both secure (encrypted) and unsecure (non encrypted) items. If a third option of, "signed but not encrypted", were available, the page could would no-longer contain both secure and insecure items -- Hell, all of my GIT commits use this type of security already...
The global CA infustructure is used for a lot more than just securing public web sites.
To understand if there is even a problem you first need to check the key usage/EKUs of these certs to see in what context the certificates are allowed to be used.
The global CA "infustructure" (sic), used in any scenario, fails to ensure the trust is certified, absolutely.
It's down-right broken, should be abandoned IMMEDIATELY!!!.
Wait! Before you mod me troll or skip past this thinking I'm a nut-job, ask yourself this: Does a "valid" cert PROVE that the domain named in the cert actually requested the cert be made? Well, does it?
NO. It does not!
A "valid" cert only proves that a "trusted" authority has signed the certificate. A "valid" cert in no way ensures that the "trusted" authority actually had the permission of the domain owner to issue the certificate.
This system can therefore not be trusted AT ALL.
The main problem is two-fold: 1) DNS is unsecure. 2) People want to charge extra for a damn public / private key chain -- a cert.
I propose, as part of DNS registration, the domain owner must create a public / private key pair and register their public key.
All requests for SSL certificates must then also be either:
1) signed FIRST by the private key of the domain owner, or...
2) done away with completely as an obsolete technology -- The domain's registered public key can be used.
The point is this: Time and time again we find that starting with a 100% unsecured system, then adding in layers of security is a faulty, insecure design. Eg: Some MS OSes, firewalls that are fully open except "bad" ports, email SPAM (no sender verification required, no end to SPAM in sight), the list goes on...
We're starting out with an unsecured network, then adding in security layers on top -- WTF? Why not just require, that after a period of adjustment has passed, all DNS & Internent packets be encrypted by the domain owner's private/public key pair? The routers don't have to be upgraded to support this -- they still just pass along the bits, but the end points can then be secured.
FTFWA DNSSEC
While protecting IP addresses is the immediate concern for many users, DNSSEC can protect other information such as general-purpose cryptographic certificates stored in CERT records in the DNS. RFC 4398 describes how to distribute these certificates, including those for email, making it possible to use DNSSEC as a worldwide public key infrastructure for email.
Bang: No more spam. Bang: no more SSL certs that weren't requested by the domain owner. Bang: no more SSL certs for unqualified names on the Internet (INTRAnet is a different matter -- set you devices to trust whatever you want, as always).
TFA is just another nail in the coffin for unsecured DNS & the whole untrustable SSL CA security theater.
Restate summary and apply its concerns more broadly to either maximize impact or water down the concern.... CHECK!
(Note to self: Fix comment.load() AJAX protocol in Slashdot bingo browser plugin -- slash.parse.js:227 )
My dotcom boss used to say "DOS is dead" when I was using command line in Windows NT3.5. Hmmph.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
1. Without Disk Operating Systems we would have no general purpose computers -- Windows / Unix & Linux are all DOS's. The D has been generalized to include Hard as well as soft disks, as well as non-volatile RAM -- persistent RAM Disk, if you will. The Disk in DOS meant that the OS was loaded from storage that's NOT HARD-CODED into the system, (software OS, not hardware based) at the time that was floppy disks... Today's computers all have "D"OSes, even the "hard-coded" parts are flashable software in most cases.
2. The risk of being subjected to a Denial of Service attact is higher than ever given the larger number of devices and applications connected to the Internet since the "dot com" era.
If they stuck to that mentality with a vengeance, we wouldnt have any of the following:
And more.
Perhaps you dont remember the days when firefox really did gobble ram down, because TabMixPlus was an utter pig, or when the 20+ addins you needed to get to today's level of functionality were unstable, leaky, and a PITA to update.
Somehow folks dont complain about all the functionality in Opera; but then I suppose the grass is always greener.
Oh, I remember... Do I ever. I make plugins & web apps. Broken standards, ridiculously inefficient web-enabled languages and poor rendering support, falling back to tables of images -- Jumping through all sorts of hoops just to get things to look decent and actually run without chugging along at a snail's pace... Sadly we just had to use whatever crap language (javascript) because that's what's available, not because we wanted to, or because it was any good.
Hey, wait, that's right now.
A fundamentalist, I am not. I'm not saying to never add new features, but Facebook & Twitter? Seriously? Yeah, that's something that I really need in A Web Browser. Hint: FACEBOOK.COM & TWITTER.COM -- already exist!
To be fair: browsers are a SHITTY application platform. No. I develop web "apps". You can't tell me otherwise, I've got the battle scars to prove it. I have to deal with the shittyness constantly. There's no user session state -- Oh, right, cookies -- limited & hacked in / build your own. Windowing API, build your own. Cross platform? Yep, you'll be downgrading some neat features to hit that average browser feature support mark. Persistent connections, nope, we can do polling or long lived requests (AJAX / COMET) but that's a hack & taxes the servers -- we're promised connections in websockets, which we can use someday, I hope. Still looks bleak on the Video standardization front.
No matter how hard we try, unless the website / web app uses canvas exclusively it won't look the same on every browser / OS. HTML5 is over 8 years late IMHO -- yes 8, yeah, YEARS! 8 months is huge in tech terms. In the interim we've been making due slapping things together with duct-tape & crappy scripting languages. Oh, faster script performance? Why not compile JS to machine code and run it?! (Yeah, that's one reason why browsers are insecure -- we'll run just about any DATA as CODE). Basically EVERYTHING you do on an interactive website is by way of a myriad of flaky hacked together kludges, and we all just have to deal with it -- and by it I mean the shittyness.
Take a document rendering engine, add a macro language (JavaScript) to automate / animate a few things -- There, now hack together applications. For your next project: Here's a weed-eater a bicycle, and some polystyrene -- Go build me a taxi cab. Either will be inefficient, slow, unwieldy, and flaky as all get-out. You're complaining about flaky plugins!? Ha! THOSE are STABLE by our web standards...
I can see why Facebook or Twitter would rather have a full-on plugin... Hey, guess what else plugins can do? They can see every flippin' website you visit. Sure, the users could just install the plugins themselves Hmm, but If it's an external plugin, Mozilla doesn't get the revenue...
Ah, now ad revenue -- THAT will get a feature integration right in...(google search: included by default, not much else is) --- until --- Hey, guess what? Facebook and Twitter are coming pre-installed into Firefox! I wonder why? Oh, usability, right -- You just keep telling yourself that.
not everyone needs a browser on their Linux (not everyone needs social network integration in their Firefox).
Not everyone needs browser tabs--like my parents, who to my knowledge don't know how to visit multiple sites simultaneously. When a large enough fraction of users benefit from a feature more than the feature hurts other users, it should probably be included.
Keep in mind that one of the reasons why Firefox is so great is that it has addons / plugins. It can be a lean download, and extended till your heart's content after the fact... There's no good reason to include a damn social network plugin by default, IMHO.
They don't include DownThemAll (download accelerator) by default, even though anyone who downloads files would benefit from that plugin's features -- Who doesn't want faster downloads?! Bandwidth is hardly an argument against acceleration -- you'll end up getting the same number of bits either way, and DTA has rate / connection limiting, so congestion isn't an issue.
The point is that given the amazing plugin support in FF, there's no real usability reason to include ANY social plugins by default.
I can see adding Tabbed browsing, or vertical tabs plugin, or multi-touch gestures, or some other core functionality features -- Like the identity management, But comparing social apps to tabs is ridiculous. If you want to argue for "social" integration, Why isn't an IRC / Instant messaging client built in? Guess--- Right, Because There's a plugin, no reason to add it by default, even though Chat is a core Internet feature, like e-mail -- Which they also don't include in Firefox... Mozilla took out the e-mail suite a long time ago to make FF snappier. How many people on the web DON'T use email?
Come on, use your brain. Of all the things to include they picked Facebook and Twitter... now, why do you suppose that is?
I am certain that the deciding factor was ad revenue partnerships, not better user interface or core feature integration. You can argue otherwise, but that doesn't make it any less obvious.