One cool thing about Firefox is support for extensions...
Not that I want to start a flame war, but IE also supports customization.
Honestly, how many of your Firefox salesmen even knew that? You may begin the obligatory security/monopoly/non-opensource bashing of MS now to try and hide the fact that FireFox's "new features" aren't really new, but "the truth is out there".
Just because you can make something a plugin, doesn't mean you should. Shoudl we also make an RSS client in Firefox via an extension? Or would that but up against the one made for FireFox. Or how about a POP3 checker? Or instant message client? Or a bread slicer! Yeah, that'd be better than just plain old sliced bread.
Personally (admission to not being objective), I prefer my functionality to be partitioned into separate programs. While making extensions is presumably easier than writing a full app, maybe the Mozilla team shoudl consider making a small container that can be used to run one-off standalone "extensions". Personally, I think WeatherFox beats the stupid thing from the Weather Channel, but since I don't run MoZilla/FireFox, I won't be using it anytime soon.
Microsoft may know the potential exists, but they wait until their entire user base is up in arms before releasing an update.
I seriously doubt you have any evidence of this. In fact, how do you know Microsoft hasn't been proactively patching potential exploits and releasing them through Windows Update and/or eachnew version of IE?
Sure, they're not getting them all, but I doubt you have any metric as to whether or not they are proactively being security minded. Maybe IE is riddled with holes, and they're fixing 90% and the exploits we see are the 10% they've missed or haven't gotten to.
I'm not trying to bash Mozilla. I just ssupect you went too far in bashing Microsoft without evidence to back it up.
I decrypted it. It says "Terrorist!". I've already contacted the authorities. I Would ask the parent poster to confirm,but he doesn't have access to slashdot from his new vacation home in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
most coders write code much faster than speaking it
This is probably true, but I'm thinking about actual writing of source code coding. What about some of the other things you do while coding? For example, I think a voice-activated debugger could be nice. I could use voice to command the debugger while another window (i.e. a web browser open to the web app I'm debugging) manipulating/controlling the program.
I've read that article before, and its quite informative. However, all it really shows is that by breaking the big election into smaller elections, you are increasing *your* vote power. That can be done without an electoral college. Just let each state's popular vote decide what candidate wins the state. No electoral college needed.
at is because grades should be a reflection of a student's mastery of the material
There was a time when I believed that.
In my junior your of high school, I took a probability and statistics course. 50% of the grade was your homework grade, and the homework problems were always the odd ones which had answers in the back of the book (we still had to show work). The other portion was mad eup of the tests.
Well, I did well on all of the tests, including 98% on the 50-question final. But I never did any of the homework. I got an F.
The teacher was quite depressed because she thought making the homework was basically a gimme to the students to help their grades, it turned out it actually factoredin the ability of the student to do things their superior felt was important whether or not the student actually felt they needed to.
And that happened around the same time that I had many other revelations. While the official curriculum is about academics (and the occasional phys. ed. courrse), what you actually learn is more. You learn how to learn, how to follow instructions, how to cheat, how to get a long with others (even if you don't necessarily like them), how to fit in (or survive not doing so), how to recognize what is socially improtant to your peers, etc.
And while much of that is not reflected in grades, some is, as in my example above. Other teachers have attendance affect grades, etc.
Honestly, looking at those schools that do not require uniforms, I think there should be a course on dressing respectfully. PErhaps in public schools where income is an issue, you have to be careful, but even a tucked in shirt would be worth more points than an untucked one.
Dang it, that means I'll have to buy a new math book for this quarter's Calc class, won't I?
Umm, you haven't been in college long, have you? You might as well get used to having to buy a new book for a subject every quarter even if there aren't any ground-breaking new discoveries!
Not trying to start a flame war here, but is there a Windows or Java version available? I'd love to have something like this on my desktop (I run Windows XP, sue me).
I tried a similar program recently for Windows, but it never seemed to queue more than one particular song (though others were listed).
In the USA, you recently got to 50% of households with broadband.
I believe it was that 50% of Internet connectedhouseholds used broadband (as opposed to dialup). But not 100% of U.S> households are Internet connected, so the value of the statistic you cited would actually be less.
"Are we alone?" That is a very important question. We can only hope to answer it by seeking out others. But why do we want to answer that? It is because *we* are lonely? Or because *we* need confirmation that life can arise randomly? Or perhaps *we* want to learn all of another civilations knowledge without having to spend the same amoutn of time they did acquiring it?
Where I'm at, the local phone company offers DSL over "copper". I could theoretically switch to VOIP. I wonde rif I could then disconnect the "phone service" and keep the DSL. If so, then it would be possible to phase out the POTS without phasing out the copper.
It's not just you. If I could get my wife to quit leaving the cordless phones on the roof of her car when she drives away, or out in teh rain overnight, etc., I'd still have my older phones that I've had to replace with newer ones that pale in comparison.
The amish want their kids to make the choice to follow their ways with full knowledge; they don't want people in their community who feel that they weren't given a choice and would feel resentful.
So you mean if we indoctrinated children at an age before they could fully understand with something like, say, a pledge of allegiance, it would be bad?
The company in Ohio that made the bulb, Shelby Electric, is no longer operating as an independent entity because they were absorbed by GE back in 1914. And somehow, GE doesn't seem to produce any 100 year light bulbs! I wonder why...
performance critical serious number crunching is done in C++
OK, I'll bite. Give us an example, even the C++ source if you wish. I'll do my best to do it in Java and see what I can come up with. I'll even share it with the community to see if I've missed anything.
a) It's not an MS crash if the hard drive fails, now is it?
No. It was merely an example of the most extreme situation from which I've had to rebuild my system. I've also had a corrupted partition table (MS's fault?) which I was able to fix by hand. The severity decreases as the list goes on.
b) You're saying you're just sticking with what you're used to, rather than learning something new, which may potentially be better, but you don't know yet?
Perhaps Latin is also a better language for me to speak instead of English, but I'll never know until I'll try. On the other hand, I have tried FireFox. Twice. Both times, the features I have become used too (read: I am productive because I am used to them and do not have time to re-learn right now) were inferior in FireFox compared to the IE counter-part. I can elaborate if you wish.
c) Complex upgrades? Replacing the executable? That's all I've had to do for the last few versions of Firefox.
From everything I've heard its more than that. It's re-installing extensions, backing up profiles, etc. And again, if its so "trivial" to upgrade, why haven't they just written an upgrade feature in the installer? I mean honestly, if we're going ot keep having debates on Slashdot about how everyone shoudl switch to it, then make it switchable. WHen people go to their technically illiterate friends' houses and install FireFox, do they also instruct them on how to do the upgrade?
d) HTML in the taskbar? Does ANYONE who uses MS software ever read interface specs? They should be regular, predictable. Say, like the bit in the taskbar matching what's in the title bar. Who'd a thunk it.
I have no idea what you're getting at here. I'm referring to embedding snippets of HTML inside quick-laucnch bars inside the Windows Task Bar and using the fact that it's IE to do build some pretty helpful fatures. Again, I can elaborate if necessary. Hoever, it is worth noting that installing FireFox won't take over the HTML-in-the-taskbar, but it is still something i Like to point out as a useful feature of/with IE.
e) Bookmarklets? Done. Works in Firefox, last I checked. Gets rid of the awful IT theme for me.
Good.
f) Flexible toolbars? Again, done. Keep the basic interface static, but you can do a lot with the favorites bars in Firefox.
I say its not done. Last I checked, I could not put two separate toolbars on the same row, and drag them about freely. When I tried, they still felt very netscapy. And can you shrink one such that it has an "overflow" button that pops out the remaining items. I've taken very detailed advantage of these things in IE to create an extremly efficient browsing experience for myself.
g) File-system-based favorites: To each his own, but I feel that an HTML based one is easier. I mean, I can just open the file in the browser and boom, all the links work, everything's there.
There are some big advantages to having things as files. You can iew your bookmarks then not just in an HTML viewer, but in any file system explorer. I use some of the deeper folders as quick-launch bars in the taskbar so I have two-click access to my favorites without opening a browser. I can also create links in the file system so that the same item appears in multiple folders, or folders under multiple folders. You can't do this when they're all embedded inside one HTML file. Besides, I wouldn't expected the open source *nix crowd that prides itself in everything being a file (i.e. many mail servers store individual e-mail messages as files) would not see the power in this.
Anyway, you're holding onto IE/MS for all the wrong reasons, mainly the fact that you're afraid of change. I wish you many painful virus and trojan infections.
I thank you for your misguided wishes. And until that happens, I'll enjoy consistent productivity and ease of use. If FireFox can ever catch up, or, at least, add enough features I want to use to offset those I'll lose, I'll switcg. But now is not the time.
1) Run Ad-Aware and/or Spybot Search & Destroy -- you're probably already infected and don't know it.
Actually, I run ad-aware and a vrus-scanner quite often. The most it ever finds are cookies which in themselves aren't that damaging.
2) Go to this site and download the latest version for your OS.
3) Find wherever you saved the file to, double click it & follow the prompts. Bam, installed.
I've not yet done this for Mozilla, but I have done it for FireFox twice now. Believe me, there were no magical addictive properties that made me want to start using it all the time.
4) Upgrade? Download new version, rename the mozilla folder to mozilla_old, install the new one, move any plug-ins from the old plug-in folder to the new one (when it says something about overwriting the one file that's in both, say 'no'), and delete the mozilla_old folder as soon as you know it all works.
If it's sooo easy, why not write an upgrade feature right into the installer so that it will do those few simple steps for ya? Have you ever had the pleasure of launchign an app, tellign you it has an update and it offers to upgrade for ya? You click OK, the thing downloads, installs and restarts with no user intervention? That is the power of having your computer do the grunt work for you so you can go on doing the work you intended to do! My job is nopt a browser upgrader, it's a computer programmer. When I need to look up an API, damnit, I only need to worry about looking up the API and little else.
It's also better than having all the information on your computer exported to Nigeria, or having your PC used like a proxy while someone hacks into someplace important enough to get the Feds to knock on your door, or having your PC used to store child pornography. Don't laugh, both of these have actually happened to people; check the news...
And those people no doubt had trojans and virii littering their system. I don't. You say you can point me to malware sites, but I won't visit them. I only click on links I trust. Just like I won't take street driving directions from a shady person, I won't follow a link from a shady site. Is that 100% safe? No, but neither is a condom.
Slashdot Mirror
Changing a "no" to a "yes" is a lot harder than extracting a "yes" in the first place.
I think my father's advice is even better:
"Sometimes, it's easier to beg forgiveness than to get permission."
One cool thing about Firefox is support for extensions...
Not that I want to start a flame war, but IE also supports customization.
Honestly, how many of your Firefox salesmen even knew that? You may begin the obligatory security/monopoly/non-opensource bashing of MS now to try and hide the fact that FireFox's "new features" aren't really new, but "the truth is out there".
Just because you can make something a plugin, doesn't mean you should. Shoudl we also make an RSS client in Firefox via an extension? Or would that but up against the one made for FireFox. Or how about a POP3 checker? Or instant message client? Or a bread slicer! Yeah, that'd be better than just plain old sliced bread.
Personally (admission to not being objective), I prefer my functionality to be partitioned into separate programs. While making extensions is presumably easier than writing a full app, maybe the Mozilla team shoudl consider making a small container that can be used to run one-off standalone "extensions". Personally, I think WeatherFox beats the stupid thing from the Weather Channel, but since I don't run MoZilla/FireFox, I won't be using it anytime soon.
Microsoft may know the potential exists, but they wait until their entire user base is up in arms before releasing an update.
I seriously doubt you have any evidence of this. In fact, how do you know Microsoft hasn't been proactively patching potential exploits and releasing them through Windows Update and/or eachnew version of IE?
Sure, they're not getting them all, but I doubt you have any metric as to whether or not they are proactively being security minded. Maybe IE is riddled with holes, and they're fixing 90% and the exploits we see are the 10% they've missed or haven't gotten to.
I'm not trying to bash Mozilla. I just ssupect you went too far in bashing Microsoft without evidence to back it up.
I decrypted it. It says "Terrorist!". I've already contacted the authorities. I Would ask the parent poster to confirm,but he doesn't have access to slashdot from his new vacation home in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
most coders write code much faster than speaking it
This is probably true, but I'm thinking about actual writing of source code coding. What about some of the other things you do while coding? For example, I think a voice-activated debugger could be nice. I could use voice to command the debugger while another window (i.e. a web browser open to the web app I'm debugging) manipulating/controlling the program.
I've read that article before, and its quite informative. However, all it really shows is that by breaking the big election into smaller elections, you are increasing *your* vote power. That can be done without an electoral college. Just let each state's popular vote decide what candidate wins the state. No electoral college needed.
The U.S. official said the cloud could be the result of a forest fire.
Perhaps it was a meteorite?
at is because grades should be a reflection of a student's mastery of the material
There was a time when I believed that.
In my junior your of high school, I took a probability and statistics course. 50% of the grade was your homework grade, and the homework problems were always the odd ones which had answers in the back of the book (we still had to show work). The other portion was mad eup of the tests.
Well, I did well on all of the tests, including 98% on the 50-question final. But I never did any of the homework. I got an F.
The teacher was quite depressed because she thought making the homework was basically a gimme to the students to help their grades, it turned out it actually factoredin the ability of the student to do things their superior felt was important whether or not the student actually felt they needed to.
And that happened around the same time that I had many other revelations. While the official curriculum is about academics (and the occasional phys. ed. courrse), what you actually learn is more. You learn how to learn, how to follow instructions, how to cheat, how to get a long with others (even if you don't necessarily like them), how to fit in (or survive not doing so), how to recognize what is socially improtant to your peers, etc.
And while much of that is not reflected in grades, some is, as in my example above. Other teachers have attendance affect grades, etc.
Honestly, looking at those schools that do not require uniforms, I think there should be a course on dressing respectfully. PErhaps in public schools where income is an issue, you have to be careful, but even a tucked in shirt would be worth more points than an untucked one.
Dang it, that means I'll have to buy a new math book for this quarter's Calc class, won't I?
Umm, you haven't been in college long, have you? You might as well get used to having to buy a new book for a subject every quarter even if there aren't any ground-breaking new discoveries!
Not trying to start a flame war here, but is there a Windows or Java version available? I'd love to have something like this on my desktop (I run Windows XP, sue me).
I tried a similar program recently for Windows, but it never seemed to queue more than one particular song (though others were listed).
In the USA, you recently got to 50% of households with broadband.
I believe it was that 50% of Internet connectedhouseholds used broadband (as opposed to dialup). But not 100% of U.S> households are Internet connected, so the value of the statistic you cited would actually be less.
Doesn't really diminish your point, though :)
"Are we alone?" That is a very important question. We can only hope to answer it by seeking out others. But why do we want to answer that? It is because *we* are lonely? Or because *we* need confirmation that life can arise randomly? Or perhaps *we* want to learn all of another civilations knowledge without having to spend the same amoutn of time they did acquiring it?
Those all seem like pretty greedy motiviations.
Where I'm at, the local phone company offers DSL over "copper". I could theoretically switch to VOIP. I wonde rif I could then disconnect the
"phone service" and keep the DSL. If so, then it would be possible to phase out the POTS without phasing out the copper.
It's not just you. If I could get my wife to quit leaving the cordless phones on the roof of her car when she drives away, or out in teh rain overnight, etc., I'd still have my older phones that I've had to replace with newer ones that pale in comparison.
Heck, I'd buy them. My family is apparently incapable of turning off lights, so if they were only burnin 4W all day long, it'd save me a lot of money!
What's the Amish viewpoint on intellectual property rights?
The amish want their kids to make the choice to follow their ways with full knowledge; they don't want people in their community who feel that they weren't given a choice and would feel resentful.
So you mean if we indoctrinated children at an age before they could fully understand with something like, say, a pledge of allegiance, it would be bad?
The company in Ohio that made the bulb, Shelby Electric, is no longer operating as an independent entity because they were absorbed by GE back in 1914. And somehow, GE doesn't seem to produce any 100 year light bulbs! I wonder why...
performance critical serious number crunching is done in C++
OK, I'll bite. Give us an example, even the C++ source if you wish. I'll do my best to do it in Java and see what I can come up with. I'll even share it with the community to see if I've missed anything.
If it wasn't for all those damned security lock downs in Java, I'd infect you with a 100% Java virus just to prove you wrong! :)
Unlike boats, programs tend to have the strange ability to grow from 12' to 80' in a short amount of time.
a) It's not an MS crash if the hard drive fails, now is it?
No. It was merely an example of the most extreme situation from which I've had to rebuild my system. I've also had a corrupted partition table (MS's fault?) which I was able to fix by hand. The severity decreases as the list goes on.
b) You're saying you're just sticking with what you're used to, rather than learning something new, which may potentially be better, but you don't know yet?
Perhaps Latin is also a better language for me to speak instead of English, but I'll never know until I'll try. On the other hand, I have tried FireFox. Twice. Both times, the features I have become used too (read: I am productive because I am used to them and do not have time to re-learn right now) were inferior in FireFox compared to the IE counter-part. I can elaborate if you wish.
c) Complex upgrades? Replacing the executable? That's all I've had to do for the last few versions of Firefox.
From everything I've heard its more than that. It's re-installing extensions, backing up profiles, etc. And again, if its so "trivial" to upgrade, why haven't they just written an upgrade feature in the installer? I mean honestly, if we're going ot keep having debates on Slashdot about how everyone shoudl switch to it, then make it switchable. WHen people go to their technically illiterate friends' houses and install FireFox, do they also instruct them on how to do the upgrade?
d) HTML in the taskbar? Does ANYONE who uses MS software ever read interface specs? They should be regular, predictable. Say, like the bit in the taskbar matching what's in the title bar. Who'd a thunk it.
I have no idea what you're getting at here. I'm referring to embedding snippets of HTML inside quick-laucnch bars inside the Windows Task Bar and using the fact that it's IE to do build some pretty helpful fatures. Again, I can elaborate if necessary. Hoever, it is worth noting that installing FireFox won't take over the HTML-in-the-taskbar, but it is still something i Like to point out as a useful feature of/with IE.
e) Bookmarklets? Done. Works in Firefox, last I checked. Gets rid of the awful IT theme for me.
Good.
f) Flexible toolbars? Again, done. Keep the basic interface static, but you can do a lot with the favorites bars in Firefox.
I say its not done. Last I checked, I could not put two separate toolbars on the same row, and drag them about freely. When I tried, they still felt very netscapy. And can you shrink one such that it has an "overflow" button that pops out the remaining items. I've taken very detailed advantage of these things in IE to create an extremly efficient browsing experience for myself.
g) File-system-based favorites: To each his own, but I feel that an HTML based one is easier. I mean, I can just open the file in the browser and boom, all the links work, everything's there.
There are some big advantages to having things as files. You can iew your bookmarks then not just in an HTML viewer, but in any file system explorer. I use some of the deeper folders as quick-launch bars in the taskbar so I have two-click access to my favorites without opening a browser. I can also create links in the file system so that the same item appears in multiple folders, or folders under multiple folders. You can't do this when they're all embedded inside one HTML file. Besides, I wouldn't expected the open source *nix crowd that prides itself in everything being a file (i.e. many mail servers store individual e-mail messages as files) would not see the power in this.
Anyway, you're holding onto IE/MS for all the wrong reasons, mainly the fact that you're afraid of change. I wish you many painful virus and trojan infections.
I thank you for your misguided wishes. And until that happens, I'll enjoy consistent productivity and ease of use. If FireFox can ever catch up, or, at least, add enough features I want to use to offset those I'll lose, I'll switcg. But now is not the time.
1) Run Ad-Aware and/or Spybot Search & Destroy -- you're probably already infected and don't know it.
Actually, I run ad-aware and a vrus-scanner quite often. The most it ever finds are cookies which in themselves aren't that damaging.
2) Go to this site and download the latest version for your OS.
3) Find wherever you saved the file to, double click it & follow the prompts. Bam, installed.
I've not yet done this for Mozilla, but I have done it for FireFox twice now. Believe me, there were no magical addictive properties that made me want to start using it all the time.
4) Upgrade? Download new version, rename the mozilla folder to mozilla_old, install the new one, move any plug-ins from the old plug-in folder to the new one (when it says something about overwriting the one file that's in both, say 'no'), and delete the mozilla_old folder as soon as you know it all works.
If it's sooo easy, why not write an upgrade feature right into the installer so that it will do those few simple steps for ya? Have you ever had the pleasure of launchign an app, tellign you it has an update and it offers to upgrade for ya? You click OK, the thing downloads, installs and restarts with no user intervention? That is the power of having your computer do the grunt work for you so you can go on doing the work you intended to do! My job is nopt a browser upgrader, it's a computer programmer. When I need to look up an API, damnit, I only need to worry about looking up the API and little else.
It's also better than having all the information on your computer exported to Nigeria, or having your PC used like a proxy while someone hacks into someplace important enough to get the Feds to knock on your door, or having your PC used to store child pornography. Don't laugh, both of these have actually happened to people; check the news...
And those people no doubt had trojans and virii littering their system. I don't. You say you can point me to malware sites, but I won't visit them. I only click on links I trust. Just like I won't take street driving directions from a shady person, I won't follow a link from a shady site. Is that 100% safe? No, but neither is a condom.
Am I the only person that thinks IE is ok?
Yes.
No