I find it disturbing that there is so little comment on perhaps the biggest issue here, the effect the NYT reporting had on the process Mr. Mitnick was due. If the NYT--the "paper of record"--was so inaccurate about the facts of this case, how can we trust any of its content? Many people will not want to be confused with the facts and continue to judge Mr. Mitnick based on false or exaggerated information. How is this right? How many other things is the NYT wrong about? (From my own reasearch and experience, plenty.)
Ozone depletion research corresponds nicely with the expiration of the patent on Freon. Anyone with any knowledge of chemistry realizes that when a cosmic ray hits O2 it form 03 (ozone). In other words, depleting ozone just makes the atmosphere produce more ozone.
While I'm not sure about the effect of the expiration of the Freon patent on ozone depletion research, your statement that "depleting ozone just makes the atmosphere produce more ozone" is hopelessly naive. There are two bad assumptions: 1. That there is nothing in the atmosphere but cosmic rays and oxygen. 2. That atmospheric chemistry isn't wack.
Ozone "depletion" actually occurs when there are other things for the oxygen atoms and molecules to bind to. Like carbon. Cosmic rays don't break up oxygen once it's bonded to carbon. So, there's less "ozone-ready" oxygen up there. Oops.
Anyone with any knowledge of chemistry knows that we understand very little about atmospheric chemistry. Positive fluorine ions are observed there!
This is the least arrogant of all the other "people are stupid" posts, so I'll reply to it.
I like how no one has noticed that the article labelled those who were "against" this idea as "anti-nuclear protestors". I'm not necessairily anti-nuclear, and I'm not actively protesting anything, yet I think that this plan carries a heavy burden of proof when it comes to feasibility.
Neglible amount of radiation? I'll believe that when they release the results of (or better yet the source for) the simulators that can show what happens to every particle in a nuclear event, and there has been enough public scrutiny to validate the results. We expect this much of the tools we use to ensure our privacy and security, why not expect the same from NASA?
Yes, there are significant long term effects of the current chemical rockets and relying on oil as a power source. (Read the book "Resource Wars" by Michael T Klare for more on this last point.) But I think we would all agree that it's human nature to "put off" consequences as much as possible, especially in the face of potentially dire short term consequences. Calling people innumerate and ignorant for being who they are is probably the most significant contributor to geek backlash, IMO. Also, not recognizing that the lastest nuclear political revival is nothing more than the American energy robber barons attempting to wrest capital from the Middle East, Caspian Sea Basin, and South China Sea is as "politically innumerate" as you claim the fear of nuclear energy is.
In order to have a discussion about politics, it is necessary to come to a consensus about what each participating party means when he/she says "politics".
Judging by your article, I conclude that you hold to the standard mainstream American idea of what politcs is (campaigns, issues, candidates, etc.), yearn for the ages when it actually "meant something", and further predict that the "wired" crowd will replace the conventional taxonomy of American politics with something else.
I first must caution you and say that at the root of politics is power, and while social structures exists--i.e. while humans interact--power will exist, and consequently politics will exist. To call what is currently happenning "the end of politics" misses several fundamental points. You're referring to a transformation, which involves and end and a beginning, but to focus on one or the other exclusively is short-sighted. (It does, however, serve to generate interest.:)
There are several other points to be made, but for brevity's sake I'll just mention my main one: life in the United States of America has, is, and probably always will be about capital. The aristocracy of blood and lineage was replaced by the aristocracy of wealth and influence. Some crumbs, i.e. the Bill of Rights, were passed on to the general population along with the infinitesimal chance of true social mobility to keep them docile and pliant. I believe that the contemporary American political climate can be measured by the degree to which the general population understands this. (This is never very widely understood.)
Both post-boomer generations witnessed the sickening boomer transformation from "flower power" to corporate power. ("Yesterdays hippes are today's yuppies.") Having one's hopes crushed is an unpleasant thing, so Gen X simply abandoned the pretense. For this, we were called "slackers". What we really were/are, I believe, were the ultimate Americans--beholden to self-interest and nothing else.
So, we'll let them have their show, and also let them pretend it means something. Sadly, though, most people know that their vote doesn't mean a damn, that it is simply a ratification of decisions bought a long time ago. People will pick an issue most important to them (abortion, etc.), vote for the candidate who says they share that view, and pray devoutly that the candidate isn't bought off later on and switches his/her position.
You've detected that "young people" are sick of this game. I put to you that many people, across all social strata, are sick of this game. Yes, we have this new medium to express ourselves with. But all media are vulnerable to propaganda, the glue of contemporary democracy, and as soon as "they" figure out how to "lock-down" the 'Net we'll see the prodigal medium welcomed into the mainstream political structures with open arms.
In response to the blown up silo: Boston Tea Party anyone? In fact, a more justifiable Boston Tea Party?
In response to the article accusing him (directly or indirectly) of murder: the babelfish translation was pretty bad, but there was one telling section which stating something like "we don't have any evidence telling us that Jose Bove _wasn't_ involved". Conversely, they don't have any evidence indicating he _was_ involved. It's typical cop thinking. Hey, there was an attack on a McDonalds. This guys doesn't like McDonalds. It fits!
NOT!
Now, I haven't found any other articles about this yet, and I'm still looking, but one must be wary of pieces of "jounalism" like this because the intent is to discredit activists in the minds of "reasonable" people.
Orpheus, you may have just been played.
In a slightly unrelated point, I'm amazed at the level to which people denouce people who present opinions and views contrary to "globalization is good and inevitable" paradigm solely because of their ideology. Questions about true intent of the founders aside, this is supposed to be the day where we stop and remember that here is one of the few places where one can hold any opinion without fear.
We are all witnessing the dawn of the 2nd McCarthy era. Those against "globalization" (one of the biggest non-words ever in my opinion) will be rounded up and persecuted to the extent that society allows it. That makes me proud to be an hypocrite^H^H^H^H American.
In the name of all that's rational, why is this moderated up to 5? It seems the moderators share the poster's completely irrational disdain for class-action lawsuits.
Class-action lawsuits are a way for individuals to pool their resources against a larger interest. It is widely acknowledged that large corporations simply stall legal actions against them, knowing that the other side will run out of resources (money) long before they ever do. Class-action status is one counter to this tactic, and enables other important things.
Now, there are such things as frivilous lawsuits, and it's unfortunate to watch our legal system get abused. However each lawsuit must be evaluated on its merits--not on the class-action status of the suit.
My personal evaluation of the merit of this suit is that it is not frivilous. In fact, I believe that AOL engages in similar practices that MS is under fire for in their anti-trust litigation. The fact that MS "squashed" Netscape is not the main issue there. What is at issue in the MS case is that MS ties its products together in anticompetitive ways. Through (potentially) illegal licensing agreements, MS forced DR-DOS, OpenDoc, Java, and a host of other technologies to the margins (or tried to) so that its revenue stream from PC software sales wasn't threatened. _That's_ the main issue.
Now, look at what the AOL suit claims. The claim is the AOL software alters the OS configuration to the point where attempting to use AOL's competition is impossible, without doing work that's beyond most computer users. Now, that's not the same as colluding with PC clone vendors to ostracize software produced by other companies, but it is similar behavior nonetheless.
You mention that you want the class-action suit to fail, because somehow that will motivate the community to take on the fact that most EULAs are happy horse crap. Wouldn't it be better if this effort _succeeded_? Isn't the legal system the proper forum for this? AOL has never expressed genuine concern for these issues, no matter what the state of popular activism is around them. We (the community) are going to have to spank them in court if we want this to change. Isn't a class-action suit a good vehicle for this? More to the point, isn't a class-action suit the _defined_ vehicle for this?
In sum, I do believe that you correctly point out the crux of the issue here, which is that software companies implicitly demand (come on, who _reads_ EULAs?) that they not be held liable for their work _in any manner whatever_. That's crap, and has to change. One way to change it is to take them to court over it (and that appears to be happenning), the other way is to provide a free (in the GNU sense of the term) alternative (which is what this community is all about). I believe the community should support this suit, and work like dogs to make free/open-source software easily available to users of _all_ levels. Because, in the end, it's all about people using their tools creatively to expand their horizons. AOL doesn't, can't, and won't provide that experience.
Please don't take this personally, but I believe it is exactly the kind of attitude potrayed in this post that allows the erosion of democracy and freedom to occur around events like this eToys vs. etoy business.
Of course/. has editorial bias./. is, in theory, run by humans. Humans have biases./. puts a lot of effort into and does a very good job at keeping editorial bias to a minimum. I believe that's why it has the level of community participation it does.
Why is it that we "don't hear all sides of the story" when (American) business or financial interests are threatened? Do you think we've heard "all sides of the story" surrounding the probable intentional bombing of of the Chinese embassy during the Kosovo conflict? Have we heard all sides of the story regarding the brutal police suppression of non-violent activists in Seattle recently? (Yes, I realize that there were some violent protestors as well. But also keep in mind that there are many eyewitness accounts of 'plant' activity. i.e. people purposefully trying to agitate the crowd and handcuffing them with plastic handcuffs when they join in.)
It seems that when the equity income of pampered knowledge workers is in question, we "haven't heard all sides of the story". When we have undisputed facts regarding an attack on democracy and freedom, it's irrelevant.
Even assuming that eToy's argument is what you claim it is, do you honestly believe they have the right to that argument? I certainly don't. It would be an extremely slippery slope to allow corporation to police network content around their "domain neighborhoods".
I also think we should be extremely wary of your assumption that "age-appropriateness" is a good thing. It has been proven time and again in other mediums that conrtols on information for the perceived benefit of the "innocent" are no subsitute for a supportive community. Look at the populatiry of (shudder) Christianity. To beg "the system" for controls on information to protect our progeny is shrugging off parental responsibility to an outside agency. We should be addressing the problems and concerns that are preventing parents from developing supportive communities in their homes (i.e. insane work hours, the engineering of materialistic market-mania in youth (Pokemon, etc.), etc.) rather than abdicating our responsibility to someone or something else and then bitching when it is ineffective.
Hold on to your hats, because I'm about to offer what appears to be a real commodity here on Slashdot: an informed opinion. I worked for Netscape from 95-99. I was there. Were you? That being said, keep in mind that this is my opinion. (#include ) The most prophetic thing I ever heard about Netscape was that it was eventually going to be a Harvard Business Study. From what I understand about those studies, that isn't very complimentary. Casting aside the inflamatory excesses of the ZDnet article, there are only two reasons why Netscape is in the position that they are in now: mismanagement and poor product quality. In that order. That should tell you something (i.e. mismanagement engenders poor product quality). I've read some comments in this thread that stated it was "wrong" for Netscape to consider the browser a "platform". Well, if we didn't convince you, we certainly convinced Microsoft. The Dept. of Justice was also able to convince Judge Jackson for us. (For those who haven't, those findings of fact are _great_ reading.) Let me let you all in on a little secret: the "Browser Wars" were/are a creation of the media and user communities. Boiled down to the purest fundamentals, our strategy was to create a networked computing "platform". Market share, especially after MS started doing their nasty, was only of marginal interest. We were trying to do something completely different. (And they are trying again with 5.0/Mozilla.) What? The "Browser Wars" didn't happen? Nonsense! I must be an idiot! How can I say that? Well, it's pretty easy, though many in the Slashdot/Linux community don't realize it. The fact is that there is a significant difference between "geek" computing and "consumer" computing. Consumers don't care about standards compliance. Consumers don't care about plugins and extenstions. Consumers care about one thing: they want what they're using to work and they don't care how. They were the target for the new platform. Our efforts were directed primarliy at them. For a whole host of reasons (mismanagement and poor quality), we were unable to achieve this. MS was, irrespective of the underhanded and illegal crap they did to make sure they were able to. Yes, as an engineer I agree that standards compliance would be a wonderful thing. There are several problems, though. The main one being I don't think developers (not just in the OSS community) don't know what they mean by the term "standards compliance". Do you know how many ambiguities are in the average standards document? (More than there should be.) What happens when the biggest fish in the pond (i.e. MS) zigs, and the rest of the community zags? This is what I think of when I hear people whining for "standards compliance": developers want their code to work and they don't care how. Does that sound like the above definition of a consumer? Bingo! It should. Achieving true standards compliance will take a lot more activism than the community is putting out. About that activism for a moment. For all the adulation Netscape/AOL got for starting the Mozilla project, the amount of useful work that has come from outside the company doesn't measure up. Sorry to burst your bubble, guys, but according to my still-connected comrades there are at most a dozen or two useful outside contributors. Most of the people who blindly assert that Open Source == Good do like to look at the code and _maybe_ tweak it for their own purposes, but the truth is that there is a high barrier to entry into the community because the source tree is an undocumented rats nest. So where are the people to document it? (More than the current 'Find the Design Patterns' thingy that's happenning.) Where are the thousands of people to QA? There's a lot more to QA than just swiping the bits and complaining about bugs. Open Source is not automatically good. It only matters if there is an active community that sincerely cares and goes out of it's way to allow newcomers to contribute without alpha-male "I'm elite and you're not," posturing. I'm firmly convinced that the success of any open source project is directly proportional to the extent that it fosters a "good" community. The Mozilla Project would not exist if AOL didn't pay the salaries of the majority of engineers who work on it. I'm sorry but that's not my definition of a "good" community. Two things have to happen if open source is to be more than a flash in the pan. The first is that the community has to realize that consumers don't care how things work. This is hard because it is fundamental to geek nature to care about how things work. The second thing is that enough socialization has to take place to end posturing, encourage newcomers, and understand that not all work can be sexy. The Mozilla project has a lot of thankless work that needs to be done. For those that truly care about their computing environment and open development communities, try to contribute whatever you can whenever you can. You may not get the reward and recognition you want, but when people talk about how great the new open source browser is, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you contributed. Having volunteered in areas outside the open source community, that feeling is more valuable than our whacked capitalist^100 culture makes it out to be.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it disturbing that there is so little comment on perhaps the biggest issue here, the effect the NYT reporting had on the process Mr. Mitnick was due. If the NYT--the "paper of record"--was so inaccurate about the facts of this case, how can we trust any of its content? Many people will not want to be confused with the facts and continue to judge Mr. Mitnick based on false or exaggerated information. How is this right? How many other things is the NYT wrong about? (From my own reasearch and experience, plenty.)
Ozone depletion research corresponds nicely with the expiration of the patent on Freon. Anyone with any knowledge of chemistry realizes that when a cosmic ray hits O2 it form 03 (ozone). In other words, depleting ozone just makes the atmosphere produce more ozone.
While I'm not sure about the effect of the expiration of the Freon patent on ozone depletion research, your statement that "depleting ozone just makes the atmosphere produce more ozone" is hopelessly naive. There are two bad assumptions: 1. That there is nothing in the atmosphere but cosmic rays and oxygen. 2. That atmospheric chemistry isn't wack.
Ozone "depletion" actually occurs when there are other things for the oxygen atoms and molecules to bind to. Like carbon. Cosmic rays don't break up oxygen once it's bonded to carbon. So, there's less "ozone-ready" oxygen up there. Oops.
Anyone with any knowledge of chemistry knows that we understand very little about atmospheric chemistry. Positive fluorine ions are observed there!
This is the least arrogant of all the other "people are stupid" posts, so I'll reply to it.
I like how no one has noticed that the article labelled those who were "against" this idea as "anti-nuclear protestors". I'm not necessairily anti-nuclear, and I'm not actively protesting anything, yet I think that this plan carries a heavy burden of proof when it comes to feasibility.
Neglible amount of radiation? I'll believe that when they release the results of (or better yet the source for) the simulators that can show what happens to every particle in a nuclear event, and there has been enough public scrutiny to validate the results. We expect this much of the tools we use to ensure our privacy and security, why not expect the same from NASA?
Yes, there are significant long term effects of the current chemical rockets and relying on oil as a power source. (Read the book "Resource Wars" by Michael T Klare for more on this last point.) But I think we would all agree that it's human nature to "put off" consequences as much as possible, especially in the face of potentially dire short term consequences. Calling people innumerate and ignorant for being who they are is probably the most significant contributor to geek backlash, IMO. Also, not recognizing that the lastest nuclear political revival is nothing more than the American energy robber barons attempting to wrest capital from the Middle East, Caspian Sea Basin, and South China Sea is as "politically innumerate" as you claim the fear of nuclear energy is.
In order to have a discussion about politics, it is necessary to come to a consensus about what each participating party means when he/she says "politics".
Judging by your article, I conclude that you hold to the standard mainstream American idea of what politcs is (campaigns, issues, candidates, etc.), yearn for the ages when it actually "meant something", and further predict that the "wired" crowd will replace the conventional taxonomy of American politics with something else.
I first must caution you and say that at the root of politics is power, and while social structures exists--i.e. while humans interact--power will exist, and consequently politics will exist. To call what is currently happenning "the end of politics" misses several fundamental points. You're referring to a transformation, which involves and end and a beginning, but to focus on one or the other exclusively is short-sighted. (It does, however, serve to generate interest. :)
There are several other points to be made, but for brevity's sake I'll just mention my main one: life in the United States of America has, is, and probably always will be about capital. The aristocracy of blood and lineage was replaced by the aristocracy of wealth and influence. Some crumbs, i.e. the Bill of Rights, were passed on to the general population along with the infinitesimal chance of true social mobility to keep them docile and pliant. I believe that the contemporary American political climate can be measured by the degree to which the general population understands this. (This is never very widely understood.)
Both post-boomer generations witnessed the sickening boomer transformation from "flower power" to corporate power. ("Yesterdays hippes are today's yuppies.") Having one's hopes crushed is an unpleasant thing, so Gen X simply abandoned the pretense. For this, we were called "slackers". What we really were/are, I believe, were the ultimate Americans--beholden to self-interest and nothing else.
So, we'll let them have their show, and also let them pretend it means something. Sadly, though, most people know that their vote doesn't mean a damn, that it is simply a ratification of decisions bought a long time ago. People will pick an issue most important to them (abortion, etc.), vote for the candidate who says they share that view, and pray devoutly that the candidate isn't bought off later on and switches his/her position.
You've detected that "young people" are sick of this game. I put to you that many people, across all social strata, are sick of this game. Yes, we have this new medium to express ourselves with. But all media are vulnerable to propaganda, the glue of contemporary democracy, and as soon as "they" figure out how to "lock-down" the 'Net we'll see the prodigal medium welcomed into the mainstream political structures with open arms.
In response to the blown up silo: Boston Tea Party anyone? In fact, a more justifiable Boston Tea Party?
In response to the article accusing him (directly or indirectly) of murder: the babelfish translation was pretty bad, but there was one telling section which stating something like "we don't have any evidence telling us that Jose Bove _wasn't_ involved". Conversely, they don't have any evidence indicating he _was_ involved. It's typical cop thinking. Hey, there was an attack on a McDonalds. This guys doesn't like McDonalds. It fits!
NOT!
Now, I haven't found any other articles about this yet, and I'm still looking, but one must be wary of pieces of "jounalism" like this because the intent is to discredit activists in the minds of "reasonable" people.
Orpheus, you may have just been played.
In a slightly unrelated point, I'm amazed at the level to which people denouce people who present opinions and views contrary to "globalization is good and inevitable" paradigm solely because of their ideology. Questions about true intent of the founders aside, this is supposed to be the day where we stop and remember that here is one of the few places where one can hold any opinion without fear.
We are all witnessing the dawn of the 2nd McCarthy era. Those against "globalization" (one of the biggest non-words ever in my opinion) will be rounded up and persecuted to the extent that society allows it. That makes me proud to be an hypocrite^H^H^H^H American.
In the name of all that's rational, why is this moderated up to 5? It seems the moderators share the poster's completely irrational disdain for class-action lawsuits.
Class-action lawsuits are a way for individuals to pool their resources against a larger interest. It is widely acknowledged that large corporations simply stall legal actions against them, knowing that the other side will run out of resources (money) long before they ever do. Class-action status is one counter to this tactic, and enables other important things.
Now, there are such things as frivilous lawsuits, and it's unfortunate to watch our legal system get abused. However each lawsuit must be evaluated on its merits--not on the class-action status of the suit.
My personal evaluation of the merit of this suit is that it is not frivilous. In fact, I believe that AOL engages in similar practices that MS is under fire for in their anti-trust litigation. The fact that MS "squashed" Netscape is not the main issue there. What is at issue in the MS case is that MS ties its products together in anticompetitive ways. Through (potentially) illegal licensing agreements, MS forced DR-DOS, OpenDoc, Java, and a host of other technologies to the margins (or tried to) so that its revenue stream from PC software sales wasn't threatened. _That's_ the main issue.
Now, look at what the AOL suit claims. The claim is the AOL software alters the OS configuration to the point where attempting to use AOL's competition is impossible, without doing work that's beyond most computer users. Now, that's not the same as colluding with PC clone vendors to ostracize software produced by other companies, but it is similar behavior nonetheless.
You mention that you want the class-action suit to fail, because somehow that will motivate the community to take on the fact that most EULAs are happy horse crap. Wouldn't it be better if this effort _succeeded_? Isn't the legal system the proper forum for this? AOL has never expressed genuine concern for these issues, no matter what the state of popular activism is around them. We (the community) are going to have to spank them in court if we want this to change. Isn't a class-action suit a good vehicle for this? More to the point, isn't a class-action suit the _defined_ vehicle for this?
In sum, I do believe that you correctly point out the crux of the issue here, which is that software companies implicitly demand (come on, who _reads_ EULAs?) that they not be held liable for their work _in any manner whatever_. That's crap, and has to change. One way to change it is to take them to court over it (and that appears to be happenning), the other way is to provide a free (in the GNU sense of the term) alternative (which is what this community is all about). I believe the community should support this suit, and work like dogs to make free/open-source software easily available to users of _all_ levels. Because, in the end, it's all about people using their tools creatively to expand their horizons. AOL doesn't, can't, and won't provide that experience.
Please don't take this personally, but I believe it is exactly the kind of attitude potrayed in this post that allows the erosion of democracy and freedom to occur around events like this eToys vs. etoy business.
Of course /. has editorial bias. /. is, in theory, run by humans. Humans have biases. /. puts a lot of effort into and does a very good job at keeping editorial bias to a minimum. I believe that's why it has the level of community participation it does.
Why is it that we "don't hear all sides of the story" when (American) business or financial interests are threatened? Do you think we've heard "all sides of the story" surrounding the probable intentional bombing of of the Chinese embassy during the Kosovo conflict? Have we heard all sides of the story regarding the brutal police suppression of non-violent activists in Seattle recently? (Yes, I realize that there were some violent protestors as well. But also keep in mind that there are many eyewitness accounts of 'plant' activity. i.e. people purposefully trying to agitate the crowd and handcuffing them with plastic handcuffs when they join in.)
It seems that when the equity income of pampered knowledge workers is in question, we "haven't heard all sides of the story". When we have undisputed facts regarding an attack on democracy and freedom, it's irrelevant.
There are a couple of undisputed facts here:
Even assuming that eToy's argument is what you claim it is, do you honestly believe they have the right to that argument? I certainly don't. It would be an extremely slippery slope to allow corporation to police network content around their "domain neighborhoods".
I also think we should be extremely wary of your assumption that "age-appropriateness" is a good thing. It has been proven time and again in other mediums that conrtols on information for the perceived benefit of the "innocent" are no subsitute for a supportive community. Look at the populatiry of (shudder) Christianity. To beg "the system" for controls on information to protect our progeny is shrugging off parental responsibility to an outside agency. We should be addressing the problems and concerns that are preventing parents from developing supportive communities in their homes (i.e. insane work hours, the engineering of materialistic market-mania in youth (Pokemon, etc.), etc.) rather than abdicating our responsibility to someone or something else and then bitching when it is ineffective.
Sorry.
Hold on to your hats, because I'm about to offer what appears to be a real commodity here on Slashdot: an informed opinion. I worked for Netscape from 95-99. I was there. Were you? That being said, keep in mind that this is my opinion. (#include ) The most prophetic thing I ever heard about Netscape was that it was eventually going to be a Harvard Business Study. From what I understand about those studies, that isn't very complimentary. Casting aside the inflamatory excesses of the ZDnet article, there are only two reasons why Netscape is in the position that they are in now: mismanagement and poor product quality. In that order. That should tell you something (i.e. mismanagement engenders poor product quality). I've read some comments in this thread that stated it was "wrong" for Netscape to consider the browser a "platform". Well, if we didn't convince you, we certainly convinced Microsoft. The Dept. of Justice was also able to convince Judge Jackson for us. (For those who haven't, those findings of fact are _great_ reading.) Let me let you all in on a little secret: the "Browser Wars" were/are a creation of the media and user communities. Boiled down to the purest fundamentals, our strategy was to create a networked computing "platform". Market share, especially after MS started doing their nasty, was only of marginal interest. We were trying to do something completely different. (And they are trying again with 5.0/Mozilla.) What? The "Browser Wars" didn't happen? Nonsense! I must be an idiot! How can I say that? Well, it's pretty easy, though many in the Slashdot/Linux community don't realize it. The fact is that there is a significant difference between "geek" computing and "consumer" computing. Consumers don't care about standards compliance. Consumers don't care about plugins and extenstions. Consumers care about one thing: they want what they're using to work and they don't care how. They were the target for the new platform. Our efforts were directed primarliy at them. For a whole host of reasons (mismanagement and poor quality), we were unable to achieve this. MS was, irrespective of the underhanded and illegal crap they did to make sure they were able to. Yes, as an engineer I agree that standards compliance would be a wonderful thing. There are several problems, though. The main one being I don't think developers (not just in the OSS community) don't know what they mean by the term "standards compliance". Do you know how many ambiguities are in the average standards document? (More than there should be.) What happens when the biggest fish in the pond (i.e. MS) zigs, and the rest of the community zags? This is what I think of when I hear people whining for "standards compliance": developers want their code to work and they don't care how. Does that sound like the above definition of a consumer? Bingo! It should. Achieving true standards compliance will take a lot more activism than the community is putting out. About that activism for a moment. For all the adulation Netscape/AOL got for starting the Mozilla project, the amount of useful work that has come from outside the company doesn't measure up. Sorry to burst your bubble, guys, but according to my still-connected comrades there are at most a dozen or two useful outside contributors. Most of the people who blindly assert that Open Source == Good do like to look at the code and _maybe_ tweak it for their own purposes, but the truth is that there is a high barrier to entry into the community because the source tree is an undocumented rats nest. So where are the people to document it? (More than the current 'Find the Design Patterns' thingy that's happenning.) Where are the thousands of people to QA? There's a lot more to QA than just swiping the bits and complaining about bugs. Open Source is not automatically good. It only matters if there is an active community that sincerely cares and goes out of it's way to allow newcomers to contribute without alpha-male "I'm elite and you're not," posturing. I'm firmly convinced that the success of any open source project is directly proportional to the extent that it fosters a "good" community. The Mozilla Project would not exist if AOL didn't pay the salaries of the majority of engineers who work on it. I'm sorry but that's not my definition of a "good" community. Two things have to happen if open source is to be more than a flash in the pan. The first is that the community has to realize that consumers don't care how things work. This is hard because it is fundamental to geek nature to care about how things work. The second thing is that enough socialization has to take place to end posturing, encourage newcomers, and understand that not all work can be sexy. The Mozilla project has a lot of thankless work that needs to be done. For those that truly care about their computing environment and open development communities, try to contribute whatever you can whenever you can. You may not get the reward and recognition you want, but when people talk about how great the new open source browser is, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you contributed. Having volunteered in areas outside the open source community, that feeling is more valuable than our whacked capitalist^100 culture makes it out to be.