Thank you for sharing that. Certainly
one of the more entertaining Katz
vivisections I've ever read. I thought
the OP would only invite the worst,
but it looks like he attracted the best.
On humor alone, this deserves greater
attention and some positive moderation.
However, you may have offended all the
knit-boys reading Slashdot. Might I
suggest poking fun at macrame instead
next time around?
You never met the people who scheduled
my workload in the past. When it comes
to scheduling, even for mighty AOL, my
expectations are diminished.
I think "is scheduled to use" is close enough to "will use" [...] much as "Mozilla 1.0 will be released soon" and "Mozilla 1.0 is scheduled to be released soon" are taken by normal readers to be equivalent.
Do you really want to assume anything about the sophistication of average language parsing skills on the 'dot?;) Here, too, my expectations are diminished.
By "will" I mean "is scheduled to" and if there's any confusion you can read the article. I did, after all provide the link.
Time and again, many 'dotters seem incapable of performing that simple action for themselves. To be honest, I pegged your post as coming from someone who probably understood what they read but chose (IMHO) language that only serves to mask further the speculation inherent in the NewsForge "news".
You were not my concern; your phrasing was.
If you're worried about "blowing" the deal by spreading the news[...]
Bah. People do what they do. Shit happens. The NewsForge piece is interesting, but I wouldn't use such strong terms as "will" to describe what might come of things in AOLand using it as a basis alone. Then again, an official AOL press release that spoke of "scheduling" the inclusion of Gecko into AOL 8.0 would be met by the same degree of suspicion on my part, too.;)
Newsforge
has reported that the new 8.0 version of AOL will use Gecko (the rendering engine in Mozilla) rather than IE!
It did no such thing. Here is the passage to which I think you refer:
"The Gecko rendering engine at the heart of the Mozilla Web browser is
scheduled to replace Microsoft's Internet Explorer as AOL's default browser [...] in the 8.0 version of AOL's client software."
Emphasis mine. For those playing at home, you may want to note two things:
"scheduled" != "will"
this is not an official announcement from AOL
Please don't fan the flames of speculation any higher. I would suggest taking a conservative approach to "news" pieces such as these in the future. Then again, why should you listen to me?
Re:Cross Platform Performance Improving
on
Mozilla 0.9.9 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
On another note, anyone feel that that "turbo mode" should be kept in the windows builds only? This might sound silly, but I expect every program to jam itself in my window system tray, but for some reason, I don't want it anywhere near my linux box[.]
Then don't enable it. Unless things have changed
since the last time I checked, it was always an
optional feature. Were there ever plans for it
to be otherwise?
Um, Hello? AOL is *funding* mozilla. Or haven't you noticed?
Oh, I've noticed. I was considering what will
truly come from this vaporous suggestion that
AOL is on the brink of some massive switch-over
on so many levels.
I'm thankful for Mozilla. I'm not going to
kid myself that the motive has anything to
do with pie-in-the-sky idealism. Mozilla is
one thing, I'm afraid people believe that
AOL will just keep on generating more good
(and usable) things for the community just
because a number of unnamed sources say that
the company is looking into adopting their
favorite toys.
Of course, right now I'm wondering how your
post is scored at "3" when the only moderation
showing is one rating of "Underrated".;)
It seems to me like they're taking all of the benefits of Linux and open-source and giving NOTHING back whatsoever.
Yes, note this quotation from the piece:
"It's still easier to optimize eveything
when we finally control both the server
and the client,
and can make them work as smoothly together as possible."
Now, should this control be established,
AOL may still give something back, but
I think that one quotation cuts to the
heart of the real matter: control.
"According to several Red Hat and AOL employees who spoke to NewsForge but
asked us not to use their names,
recent negotiations between AOL and Red Hat
that led to rumors...
were really..."
Granted, there are a lot of direct quotations in
this NewsForge 'exlusive'. But seeing is believing, and even then, one can't always be too sure.
For all you trolls out there, note that the byline on the article belongs Robin 'Roblimo' Miller.
Omega, the roguelike, is still floating around.
Old versions can be had from the
official distribution page.
The game is still under on-again,
off-again development by William
Tanksley (the third person to helm
its development). More recent builds
of his work can be found over at
Sourceforge.
Sure there is [such a thing as a neutral site]. Of course browsing habits and preferences vary...
Which is precisely my point. There is no
dispute that general interest site logs will
represent wider audience preferences.
Treating those numbers as the whole picture
for all sites remains mistaken.
If anything, the application of some imagined
or real Internet average to all cases is far
from neutral and an abuse of statistics.
Overall user agent share may be of importance
to those making decisions based on general
browser popularity (e.g., plugin creators
such as Macromedia). To web developers,
though, numbers for sites like CNN etc.
are less significant than the audience
statistics for whatever site they themselves
manage. Actual average be damned -- it's
only an average, and should not be taken as
meaningful in all contexts.
[Y]ou don't REALLY think that 27% of all WWW users surf with Netscape and that out of those, 52.3% would be using Mozilla?
As a developer, I don't care about
all users, just those who visit the sites
I manage. I could care less about overall,
average market share.
Honestly, I have no idea what reliable
number of users Internet-wide use Netscape
in place of MSIE. There is far too much
uncertainty in data collection methods to
say with much authority. Netscape use of
~25% Internet-wide wouldn't surprise me,
but I don't preoccupy myself with the
universe of all Internet users on a
day-to-day basis, just the
pocket of users heading my way.
I'm just saying that if you measure stats on "neutral" sites [...] Mozilla and Netscape 6.x
are more or less absent from the statistics.
Again, that's fine and all, but it doesn't
really impact site design on the ground --
apart from providing a general sense of what
one might expect prior to site launch. After
launch, those numbers are more or less of
little value compared to actual site traffic.
Please note that even on your site, Netscape 6.x had a smaller market share than Netscape 3.x!!
I don't really understand what the two exclamation
points are supposed to signify. I'm not altogether
surprised with that number.
Netscape 6.x has not been terribly well-marketed. Netscape 6.0 was an atrocious browser, and I'm willing to bet that many of its adopters gave up, rather than stuck things out until 6.2.1, which
remedied most outstanding issues.
On the other hand, a lot of people must endure
Netscape 4.x at work as a matter of company policy.
Based on anecdotal evidence, those who actively
seek out browsers to meet their needs tossed over
4.x/6.x (where possible) in favor of other Mozilla-based agents -- if
not Mozilla itself, then Galeon, Skipstone, Dillo,
etc. A lot of people are just winging it for now,
including Netscape, which continues to release
minor point-releases to the 4.x series.
Bottom line: 17%, 25%, 100% -- I just don't care.
Those numbers don't impact my work directly. The
actual numbers for *my* sites do, not the numbers
from CNN, BBC, etc. I can say, though, that though
MSIE remains dominant (both for my users, and it
would seem, users in general), there is far too
much variance in browser usage to rule on one to
the exclusion of others.
If anything, lag in upgrade schedules for both
MSIE and Netscape users (and, to a lesser extent,
Opera) remains a pivotal issue to me. It's easy
to group the camps under the headings MSIE, Netscape, whatever. It's another to go back and
see how diverse each camp remains when one
considers the multiplicity of versions past and
present.
Leaving aside Netscape, it's far more interesting
to me that MSIE 6.x adoption hasn't accelerated
much among my visitors. But that's another story.
blah blah blah Check the stats from any "neutral" site blah blah blah
There is no such thing as a 'neutral' site.
Browsing habits and browsers-of-choice vary
widely from one audience to the next. Good
web designers take this into account when
developing for their particular audiences.
Though the numbers you cite are nice and
all, they mean squat if the particular
audience doesn't match them. For the site
I'm developing now, the numbers break down
something like this for the last four or
five months:
"Big Three" Breakdown:
MSIE - 63.5%
Netscape - 26.7%
Opera - 9.8%
Netscape Breakdown:
Mozilla - 52.3%
4.xx - 44.1%
3.xx - 2.2%
6.xx - 1.4%
MSIE still represents the majority
of visitors, but the remaining share
is pretty sizeable. Of Netscapish
users, Mozilla is far in the lead.
It's also interesting to note that
this particular class of users is
far more willing to upgrade Netscape
(when used) than MSIE (when used):
Netscape 4.77/4.78 lead the 4.xx
crowd, but MSIE 5.xx users outnumber
MSIE 6.xx users 2-to-1.
I don't see the numbers you see for
the audience that means the most to
me: the one for which I have to design.
I always read GamesDomain for online PC game reviews. They always seemed much more uppity about things. Although lag was sometimes a bit painful for certain key reviews, it contributed to my impression that the reviewers actually played the games in question. I have to know, though, were they just taking their time, or was the lag some by-product of its (British?) origin? Or did they skate by like other reviewers, using the free time to pursue less noble goals?
Go ahead. Burst my bubble. I stopped reading the site compulsively after the last round of layout changes and site reorganization (more ads, less intelligent design). I just want to know the truth.
Yup, what it sais in the subject... my bookshelf prooves I don't pirate books.
I usually don't advocate piracy of any kind (open seas, software, etc.), but in your case I'm willing to make an exception. Please commandeer a dictionary at your earliest convenience.
Seems to me that the market is flooded with companies trying to sell consumer statistics. With all that competition, how do any of them expect to make any money?
Easy. Someone comes along and offers to perform a matchback on the data, buying data from each of the companies mentioned. The more 'competitors' chasing after information, the more robust the matchback.
savanna [http://savannah.gnu.org/] is a good alternative
It's one thing to misspell a word... but the name of a project? When the correct spelling is in the link's URL? Has the art of previewing been lost forever on Slashdot? Unbelievable. And two people modded the above as informative -- even though everyone else and his/her monkey is talking about Savannah (and spelling it correctly, to boot).
No wonder searches (be in on the Web on just here on Slashdot) are approaching uselessness, as we begin to choke on our misspellings. Sad.
I'd love to question the "guarantee" that Savannah will remain free. I'm certain it will for projects that stay in line with GNU policy/teachings. Should an influx of projects wash up on Savannah's shores in the near future to strain its resources... Well, don't think the good people at GNU are going to let everyone suffer shortages so any ol' project can get access to CVS. The project may remain free (as in libre), but who's going to host it in that situation? Why wouldn't the GNU ask for donations to expand the service?
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 3.5).
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 5.9).
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 7.2).
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 8.1).
Lameness filter... gotta love it. I guess Slashdot ensures everyone displays symptoms of logorrhea
in their posts just to get around it. Another word for logorrhea is pleonasm. I'm on the verge of punching the computer screen at the moment, watching the characters/line count inch upward...
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for sharing that. Certainly one of the more entertaining Katz vivisections I've ever read. I thought the OP would only invite the worst, but it looks like he attracted the best.
On humor alone, this deserves greater attention and some positive moderation. However, you may have offended all the knit-boys reading Slashdot. Might I suggest poking fun at macrame instead next time around?
I'm getting sick and tired of hearing the same old anti-Jon BS every time he's posting something
Yes, I know I'll loose karma over this
No, you'll just get a flood of replies from grammar nazis such as myself pointing out your misuse of the English language.
Relax, I'm just poking fun at the ridiculous public display of your "I'm not wrong, but I'll be punished anyway" mindset.
Although, you did seem to loosen a little karma (or at least motivated it to act) in posting with a +1 bonus. ;)
"scheduled" pretty much == "will"
You never met the people who scheduled my workload in the past. When it comes to scheduling, even for mighty AOL, my expectations are diminished.
I think "is scheduled to use" is close enough to "will use" [...] much as "Mozilla 1.0 will be released soon" and "Mozilla 1.0 is scheduled to be released soon" are taken by normal readers to be equivalent.
Do you really want to assume anything about the sophistication of average language parsing skills on the 'dot? ;) Here, too, my expectations are diminished.
By "will" I mean "is scheduled to" and if there's any confusion you can read the article. I did, after all provide the link.
Time and again, many 'dotters seem incapable of performing that simple action for themselves. To be honest, I pegged your post as coming from someone who probably understood what they read but chose (IMHO) language that only serves to mask further the speculation inherent in the NewsForge "news". You were not my concern; your phrasing was.
If you're worried about "blowing" the deal by spreading the news[...]
Bah. People do what they do. Shit happens. The NewsForge piece is interesting, but I wouldn't use such strong terms as "will" to describe what might come of things in AOLand using it as a basis alone. Then again, an official AOL press release that spoke of "scheduling" the inclusion of Gecko into AOL 8.0 would be met by the same degree of suspicion on my part, too. ;)
Newsforge has reported that the new 8.0 version of AOL will use Gecko (the rendering engine in Mozilla) rather than IE!
It did no such thing. Here is the passage to which I think you refer:
Emphasis mine. For those playing at home, you may want to note two things:
Please don't fan the flames of speculation any higher. I would suggest taking a conservative approach to "news" pieces such as these in the future. Then again, why should you listen to me?
On another note, anyone feel that that "turbo mode" should be kept in the windows builds only? This might sound silly, but I expect every program to jam itself in my window system tray, but for some reason, I don't want it anywhere near my linux box[.]
Then don't enable it. Unless things have changed since the last time I checked, it was always an optional feature. Were there ever plans for it to be otherwise?
Um, Hello? AOL is *funding* mozilla. Or haven't you noticed?
Oh, I've noticed. I was considering what will truly come from this vaporous suggestion that AOL is on the brink of some massive switch-over on so many levels.
I'm thankful for Mozilla. I'm not going to kid myself that the motive has anything to do with pie-in-the-sky idealism. Mozilla is one thing, I'm afraid people believe that AOL will just keep on generating more good (and usable) things for the community just because a number of unnamed sources say that the company is looking into adopting their favorite toys.
Of course, right now I'm wondering how your post is scored at "3" when the only moderation showing is one rating of "Underrated". ;)
We all seem to know that AOL on Wintel utilizes the Microsoft rendering engine. What does AOL for MacOS use?
Has AOL ever used a rendering engine for either platform other than the one(s) used now?
If AOL has switched in the past, what was the motivation then?
(Finally, a reason to use my +1 bonus.)
It seems to me like they're taking all of the benefits of Linux and open-source and giving NOTHING back whatsoever.
Yes, note this quotation from the piece:
Now, should this control be established, AOL may still give something back, but I think that one quotation cuts to the heart of the real matter: control.
"According to several Red Hat and AOL employees who spoke to NewsForge but asked us not to use their names, recent negotiations between AOL and Red Hat that led to rumors... were really..."
Granted, there are a lot of direct quotations in this NewsForge 'exlusive'. But seeing is believing, and even then, one can't always be too sure.
For all you trolls out there, note that the byline on the article belongs Robin 'Roblimo' Miller.
Funniest ... exchange ... ever.
err... the LOTR story was written decades ago.
You missed the point. Jackson's revisioning of Tolkien's work wasn't.
[beavis] He said coherent hole ... heh heh.
[/beavis]
At least they havn't started chopping up pre-existing movies. The WTC is still there in "Trading Places", even in "Pushing Tin" and "Meteor".
And in movies where the Towers were CGI or computer composited - like the recently-released A.I. Like all things, this will pass.
[150m.com]
For some reason, I find it hilarious that a Web site entitled "The Individualist Anarchist" stuffs cookies down my browser.
Oh, well. Who am I to tell its webmaster what to do? *rimshot*
Update: 03/05 00:19 GMT by T : "Pioneer," not "Voyager." Asleep at the keyboard.
Asleep? Sure... I know the truth.
The more Slashdot I read, the greater my suspicion that its trollish inhabitants furiously post only to attempt to beat back the undead editors.
Am I alone in thinking that? The truth is still out there, isn't it?
From the referenced email by Bill Gates:
In three or four years the industry will have moved over to 64-bit architecture, and it looks like it will suffice for more than a decade.
- W. Gates, 2002
Maybe you should put it in the bank for fourteen years, to quell the cries of nit pickers everywhere.
Does anyone remember a game called Omega as well?
Omega, the roguelike, is still floating around. Old versions can be had from the official distribution page. The game is still under on-again, off-again development by William Tanksley (the third person to helm its development). More recent builds of his work can be found over at Sourceforge.
Sure there is [such a thing as a neutral site]. Of course browsing habits and preferences vary...
Which is precisely my point. There is no dispute that general interest site logs will represent wider audience preferences. Treating those numbers as the whole picture for all sites remains mistaken. If anything, the application of some imagined or real Internet average to all cases is far from neutral and an abuse of statistics.
Overall user agent share may be of importance to those making decisions based on general browser popularity (e.g., plugin creators such as Macromedia). To web developers, though, numbers for sites like CNN etc. are less significant than the audience statistics for whatever site they themselves manage. Actual average be damned -- it's only an average, and should not be taken as meaningful in all contexts.
[Y]ou don't REALLY think that 27% of all WWW users surf with Netscape and that out of those, 52.3% would be using Mozilla?
As a developer, I don't care about all users, just those who visit the sites I manage. I could care less about overall, average market share.
Honestly, I have no idea what reliable number of users Internet-wide use Netscape in place of MSIE. There is far too much uncertainty in data collection methods to say with much authority. Netscape use of ~25% Internet-wide wouldn't surprise me, but I don't preoccupy myself with the universe of all Internet users on a day-to-day basis, just the pocket of users heading my way.
I'm just saying that if you measure stats on "neutral" sites [...] Mozilla and Netscape 6.x are more or less absent from the statistics.
Again, that's fine and all, but it doesn't really impact site design on the ground -- apart from providing a general sense of what one might expect prior to site launch. After launch, those numbers are more or less of little value compared to actual site traffic.
Please note that even on your site, Netscape 6.x had a smaller market share than Netscape 3.x!!
I don't really understand what the two exclamation points are supposed to signify. I'm not altogether surprised with that number.
Netscape 6.x has not been terribly well-marketed. Netscape 6.0 was an atrocious browser, and I'm willing to bet that many of its adopters gave up, rather than stuck things out until 6.2.1, which remedied most outstanding issues.
On the other hand, a lot of people must endure Netscape 4.x at work as a matter of company policy. Based on anecdotal evidence, those who actively seek out browsers to meet their needs tossed over 4.x/6.x (where possible) in favor of other Mozilla-based agents -- if not Mozilla itself, then Galeon, Skipstone, Dillo, etc. A lot of people are just winging it for now, including Netscape, which continues to release minor point-releases to the 4.x series.
Bottom line: 17%, 25%, 100% -- I just don't care. Those numbers don't impact my work directly. The actual numbers for *my* sites do, not the numbers from CNN, BBC, etc. I can say, though, that though MSIE remains dominant (both for my users, and it would seem, users in general), there is far too much variance in browser usage to rule on one to the exclusion of others.
If anything, lag in upgrade schedules for both MSIE and Netscape users (and, to a lesser extent, Opera) remains a pivotal issue to me. It's easy to group the camps under the headings MSIE, Netscape, whatever. It's another to go back and see how diverse each camp remains when one considers the multiplicity of versions past and present.
Leaving aside Netscape, it's far more interesting to me that MSIE 6.x adoption hasn't accelerated much among my visitors. But that's another story.
blah blah blah Check the stats from any "neutral" site blah blah blah
There is no such thing as a 'neutral' site. Browsing habits and browsers-of-choice vary widely from one audience to the next. Good web designers take this into account when developing for their particular audiences.
Though the numbers you cite are nice and all, they mean squat if the particular audience doesn't match them. For the site I'm developing now, the numbers break down something like this for the last four or five months:
"Big Three" Breakdown:
Netscape Breakdown:
MSIE still represents the majority of visitors, but the remaining share is pretty sizeable. Of Netscapish users, Mozilla is far in the lead. It's also interesting to note that this particular class of users is far more willing to upgrade Netscape (when used) than MSIE (when used): Netscape 4.77/4.78 lead the 4.xx crowd, but MSIE 5.xx users outnumber MSIE 6.xx users 2-to-1.
I don't see the numbers you see for the audience that means the most to me: the one for which I have to design.
Ebay owns Billpoint [...] It's absolutely terrible.
One ... could ... elaborate ...
Brevity, the soul of wit? My ass! Try telling that to the freakin' lameness filter. Freakin', I say. Freakin'.
I always read GamesDomain for online PC game reviews. They always seemed much more uppity about things. Although lag was sometimes a bit painful for certain key reviews, it contributed to my impression that the reviewers actually played the games in question. I have to know, though, were they just taking their time, or was the lag some by-product of its (British?) origin? Or did they skate by like other reviewers, using the free time to pursue less noble goals?
Go ahead. Burst my bubble. I stopped reading the site compulsively after the last round of layout changes and site reorganization (more ads, less intelligent design). I just want to know the truth.
I can handle it. Honest.
Yup, what it sais in the subject ... my bookshelf prooves I don't pirate books.
I usually don't advocate piracy of any kind (open seas, software, etc.), but in your case I'm willing to make an exception. Please commandeer a dictionary at your earliest convenience.
Seems to me that the market is flooded with companies trying to sell consumer statistics. With all that competition, how do any of them expect to make any money?
Easy. Someone comes along and offers to perform a matchback on the data, buying data from each of the companies mentioned. The more 'competitors' chasing after information, the more robust the matchback.
savanna [http://savannah.gnu.org/] is a good alternative
It's one thing to misspell a word... but the name of a project? When the correct spelling is in the link's URL? Has the art of previewing been lost forever on Slashdot? Unbelievable. And two people modded the above as informative -- even though everyone else and his/her monkey is talking about Savannah (and spelling it correctly, to boot).
No wonder searches (be in on the Web on just here on Slashdot) are approaching uselessness, as we begin to choke on our misspellings. Sad.
I'd love to question the "guarantee" that Savannah will remain free. I'm certain it will for projects that stay in line with GNU policy/teachings. Should an influx of projects wash up on Savannah's shores in the near future to strain its resources... Well, don't think the good people at GNU are going to let everyone suffer shortages so any ol' project can get access to CVS. The project may remain free (as in libre), but who's going to host it in that situation? Why wouldn't the GNU ask for donations to expand the service?
"You get what you pay for," is demonstrably a myth [...] Air is the most valuable substance [...] Yet it costs nothing.
I guess the EPA works for free, too. Oh, wait. Dubya requested $7.7 billion for the agency for FY 2003.
It would be a PR coo [...]
Pigeons coo. It would be a PR coup.
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 3.5).
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 5.9).
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 7.2).
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 8.1).
Lameness filter ... gotta love it. I guess Slashdot ensures everyone displays symptoms of logorrhea
in their posts just to get around it. Another word for logorrhea is pleonasm. I'm on the verge of punching the computer screen at the moment, watching the characters/line count inch upward...