I agree that right now the browser wars are a joke. However...
If history teaches us anything (esp with technology) it's that things can and do turn on a dime. To completely reverse Netscape's fortunes all it would take is for AOL (who owns Netscape) to switch brands from IE to NS. Why would AOL keep paying developers to work on a "dead" web browser if they didn't plan on using the silly thing some day? Virtually overnight you'd see the browser wars become a dead heat and you'd get "Berst Alerts" over at ZDNet proclaiming that he knew NS was merely sleeping all along. Yesterday's giants are tomorrow's punching bags and everyone who you stepped on while you were on top will make sure to give you their heel on your way down. Other companies would do well to heed that lesson which IBM and NS had to learn the hard way... Unfortunately it appears to be far too late to teach an old dog like MS and IE any new tricks.
Ok, I don't usually respond to trolls but I'll bite this time...
(a) On a news scale this is up there with 'Word gets new spelling dialog' (b) The pictures aren't very impressive compared with say, OSX
So it is with open source software - the Capitalist option is superior to the Communist one - Windows is greatly superior to KDE/Gnome, and Solaris is better than Linux.
Is it just me or does anyone else find this strangely ironic? You say that OSX and Capitalist solutions are inherently superior to Open Source solutions but OSX is using an open source solution for arguably the most important part of the whole OS... it's kernel (BSD).
Some look at pretty pictures and oogle, others look at the underlying infrastructure and marvel.
Peer to Peer File Sharing Alternatives
on
Scour is Dead
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· Score: 2
"Guess we'll have to wait for that multi media peer to peer system until Gnutella is solid."
I'm quite surprised I've seen no mention of Freenet in this dicussion. Freenet uses intelligent routing to find and remember the most efficient routes. Freenet also boasts intelligent file sharing (the most accessed files are mirrored all over). Couple that with the inability of one hostile group or person to remove files from the network and you have a kickass file sharing mechanism IMO. Very cool project...
-Pato
First of all I'd like to qualify these comments with the statement that I'm part of the WorldForge community so my opinions are probably worth what you paid for them...
In concept something like this is a wonderful thing however reading the FAQ fills me with trepidation. Let me elaborate...
In order to run the emulator you have to own the game so the emulator can rip all the artwork and music out of the game. I'm sorry but this is just plain illegal and unethical. The/. crowd runs around foaming at the mouth for any perceived, slight derivation from the GPL but not a whimper about anyone else's property rights. This is just plain ridiculous. You cannot use someone else's artwork, music what have you without the author's consent. The developers claim that the emulator is legal because "it's 100% reverse engineered" is just plain wrong minded and and illegal really. If they used their own music, artwork I would be cheering them on and even looking into cooperation between our two projects but this just is just disturbing..
How do you expect anyone to respect the (rights of the) GPL or the FSF when you trample on everyone else's rights?
From Seatlle PI Article: Competitors such as Sun Microsystems will flourish in the ensuing uncertainty, capitalizing on customers' fears about Microsoft's future, Enderle predicted.
What delicious irony it is that Microsoft's value as a company (it's stock price) is the victim of FUD... Can you get much better than this? I doubt it.... -Pato
But people using programs like WinAmp and Mozilla have no choice! They can't even use a normal Windows or Mac interface if they want to, let alone having it as the default.
People can indeed choose a generic Netscape theme which looks like the same ol' Netscape they're used to using. That's what skins are all about really -choice. -Pato
The manager at "Chevron" has to believe that they are getting something better than the others. With Open Source, that "belief" is too easily disproved.
What the manager of any large corporations really do/should care about is: A) Does this program meet our needs and will it be likely to do so in the future? B) How much does it cost? I think Open Source answers both of these questions beautifully. "Better" is a subjective term and everyone you ask will have a different opinion of what better is.
There isn't one true way to do things. When you get down to it, scripting languages themselves are the wrong way to do things. Sure, they save one programmer some hours, but they cost millions of people CPU time. Hrmmm... You're assuming that *millons* of ppl will be using a program and that they'll be using the written program alot. What if only a few ppl use a given program or if the program is only used infrequently? If app speed is important you can always imbed Python in areas of C apps that aren't that performance hungry. -Pato
IE is an important part of Win98. Microsoft can't do that to their product, make half the things stop working just cause netscape whines.
How hard would it be for MS during install to to have an option not to enable web content? Not very I'll bet. I'm not sure what your beef with NS but it's not just them that are complaining. No one wants "features" shoved down their throats without the option of not installing them in the first place or at least being able to uninstall them.
If Microsoft had gone and created a proprietry format for their "active desktop", "html templates" and "html help", then there would have been ABSOLUTELY no problem.
The HTML that Word and other MS apps generates IS propietary... It's called "embrace and extend" and it's exactly what they tried to do with java. Ever try coverting a document to HTML in Word? They add all sorts of propietary crap in there. We would see MS HTML (which would be totally incompatible with W3C standards of course) in a heartbeat if Bill could get enough ppl using IE to pull it off.
The problem here is that they're using IE technology (in a hideously cool way - look at KDE) and all hell breaks lose of of whiney netscape.
Your cool feature is another persons annoying bell or whistle. How can you hide behind MS's position not to give their consumers a choice and then point the finger at NS? With KDE you can uninstall whatever you want... With MS ummm... Too bad!!!
If IE was removed HTML help, HTML folders etc would stop working, and don't tell me Microsoft should not have added them (just for netscape eh?), they're very cool, and a smart move, who's going to go and invent a new format when you have HTML and DHTML?
My problem isn't that MS added these features it's that there is no way to disable them or not install them in the first place. Of course then that would give another app a chance to flourish and possibly develop into another OS cos of their APIs! (horror) These "very cool" features have been shown to be a real anchor around Window's neck when it comes to performance. What if I want to make my computer faster by making sure that doesn't have this my-active-desktop-is-a-webpage crap??? Nope, can't do it. And it's all cos NS has their own APIs and MS gets really testy about that! MS wants the "Freedom to Innovate" at their own pace but squashes everyone else who would come up with their own innovations.
If you don't want to use IE for your browser, you have the *choice* to use netscape (or opera or...), Windows does not stop you from doing that.
Windows doesn't stop you but Microsoft sure gets testy about it... I seem to remember MS threatening to sue Gateway and several other big OEMs for having the audacity to preinstall NS on their machines along side IE. All because those OEMs wanted to give their customers more than initial choice for a browser. Is that really so bad?? Bottom line is that with MS you don't have the choices that you have in *nix and several other OSes.
The point is microsoft WANTS HTML help in their product, and they have IE technology (it's just a bunch of dlls) that they can use to do exactly that.
What if *I* DON'T want HTML help or any of the other bells and whistles that Bill summarily shoves down our throats... Too bad for us I spose. I thought MS was all for freedom? Oh yes, that's right... Only *their* freedoms...
It's almost always a bad idea to take anything from MS...;)
"If a car + engine are one product, then how come I can buy an engine seperately?"
This comparison is unsound which makes your analysis flawed and here's why... An engine is a vital part of a car and without one a car is useless. Windows can certainly run without IE (one of the govt's witnesses uninstalled IE) and therefore isn't vital to Windows' operation. Windows certainly isn't useless without IE as a car is without an engine. A better comparison would be that of a car and it's radio. A radio is a little extra that's added to your car by the car manufacturer just as IE is an extra to Windows. Can you get a car without a radio? Sure, if you want. Can you take out the radio that came with your car or get different a kind of radio to put in your car? Yep. Can you get Windows without IE? errr... Can you easily uninstall IE? hrmmm... If we saw Ford installing radios that could only be replaced with a newer Ford radio the uproar coming from those Low Rider Truck Magazines (not to mention everyone else) causes my bitchometer to go off the scale.
"Just cause IE can come as a seperate product, doesn't mean it isn't an important part of Windows 98."
Evidently not that important a part of since one of the government witnesses managed to completely uninstall IE from Windows. Funny that this "important part of Windows" didn't start binding itself to Windows until v4.0 of IE. I'd also like to mention that when IE 4.0 first came out, during the install process MS didn't tell you that you wouldn't be able to uninstall IE 4. Removing IE from the control panel would break your system with extreme prejudice. Truly that is evil...
"Just cause vi can come as a seperate component doesn't mean it isn't an important part of Unix."
The point is that with *nix you have a choice! You can easily remove vi if you like but it's not that easy to remove IE thanks to our friends in Redmond. But then again Microsoft has never been about choice or freedom for the consumer. MS has always been about building a bunker in the OS market (or whatever else they can get their claws into) so that consumers don't have any choices and Ft. Redmond is unassailable by any competitors.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that right now the browser wars are a joke. However...
If history teaches us anything (esp with technology) it's that things can and do turn on a dime. To completely reverse Netscape's fortunes all it would take is for AOL (who owns Netscape) to switch brands from IE to NS. Why would AOL keep paying developers to work on a "dead" web browser if they didn't plan on using the silly thing some day? Virtually overnight you'd see the browser wars become a dead heat and you'd get "Berst Alerts" over at ZDNet proclaiming that he knew NS was merely sleeping all along. Yesterday's giants are tomorrow's punching bags and everyone who you stepped on while you were on top will make sure to give you their heel on your way down. Other companies would do well to heed that lesson which IBM and NS had to learn the hard way... Unfortunately it appears to be far too late to teach an old dog like MS and IE any new tricks.
Ok, I don't usually respond to trolls but I'll bite this time...
(a) On a news scale this is up there with 'Word gets new spelling dialog' (b) The pictures aren't very impressive compared with say, OSX
So it is with open source software - the Capitalist option is superior to the Communist one - Windows is greatly superior to KDE/Gnome, and Solaris is better than Linux.
Is it just me or does anyone else find this strangely ironic? You say that OSX and Capitalist solutions are inherently superior to Open Source solutions but OSX is using an open source solution for arguably the most important part of the whole OS... it's kernel (BSD).
Some look at pretty pictures and oogle, others look at the underlying infrastructure and marvel.
"Guess we'll have to wait for that multi media peer to peer system until Gnutella is solid."
I'm quite surprised I've seen no mention of Freenet in this dicussion. Freenet uses intelligent routing to find and remember the most efficient routes. Freenet also boasts intelligent file sharing (the most accessed files are mirrored all over). Couple that with the inability of one hostile group or person to remove files from the network and you have a kickass file sharing mechanism IMO. Very cool project... -Pato
First of all I'd like to qualify these comments with the statement that I'm part of the WorldForge community so my opinions are probably worth what you paid for them...
In concept something like this is a wonderful thing however reading the FAQ fills me with trepidation. Let me elaborate...
In order to run the emulator you have to own the game so the emulator can rip all the artwork and music out of the game. I'm sorry but this is just plain illegal and unethical. The /. crowd runs around foaming at the mouth for any perceived, slight derivation from the GPL but not a whimper about anyone else's property rights. This is just plain ridiculous. You cannot use someone else's artwork, music what have you without the author's consent. The developers claim that the emulator is legal because "it's 100% reverse engineered" is just plain wrong minded and and illegal really. If they used their own music, artwork I would be cheering them on and even looking into cooperation between our two projects but this just is just disturbing..
How do you expect anyone to respect the (rights of the) GPL or the FSF when you trample on everyone else's rights?
-Jason
From Seatlle PI Article:
Competitors such as Sun Microsystems will flourish in the ensuing uncertainty, capitalizing on customers' fears about Microsoft's future, Enderle predicted.
What delicious irony it is that Microsoft's value as a company (it's stock price) is the victim of FUD... Can you get much better than this? I doubt it....
-Pato
But people using programs like WinAmp and Mozilla have no choice! They can't even use a normal Windows or Mac interface if they want to, let alone having it as the default.
People can indeed choose a generic Netscape theme which looks like the same ol' Netscape they're used to using. That's what skins are all about really -choice.-Pato
The manager at "Chevron" has to believe that they are getting something better than the others. With Open Source, that "belief" is too easily disproved.
What the manager of any large corporations really do/should care about is:A) Does this program meet our needs and will it be likely to do so in the future?
B) How much does it cost?
I think Open Source answers both of these questions beautifully. "Better" is a subjective term and everyone you ask will have a different opinion of what better is.
There isn't one true way to do things. When you get down to it, scripting languages themselves are the wrong way to do things. Sure, they save one programmer some hours, but they cost millions of people CPU time. Hrmmm... You're assuming that *millons* of ppl will be using a program and that they'll be using the written program alot. What if only a few ppl use a given program or if the program is only used infrequently? If app speed is important you can always imbed Python in areas of C apps that aren't that performance hungry. -Pato
If you don't mind switching window managers fvwm95 looks just like Windows.
IE is an important part of Win98. Microsoft can't do that to their product, make half the things stop working just cause netscape whines.
How hard would it be for MS during install to to have an option not to enable web content? Not very I'll bet. I'm not sure what your beef with NS but it's not just them that are complaining. No one wants "features" shoved down their throats without the option of not installing them in the first place or at least being able to uninstall them.
If Microsoft had gone and created a proprietry format for their "active desktop", "html templates" and "html help", then there would have been ABSOLUTELY no problem.
The HTML that Word and other MS apps generates IS propietary... It's called "embrace and extend" and it's exactly what they tried to do with java. Ever try coverting a document to HTML in Word? They add all sorts of propietary crap in there. We would see MS HTML (which would be totally incompatible with W3C standards of course) in a heartbeat if Bill could get enough ppl using IE to pull it off.
The problem here is that they're using IE technology (in a hideously cool way - look at KDE) and all hell breaks lose of of whiney netscape.
Your cool feature is another persons annoying bell or whistle. How can you hide behind MS's position not to give their consumers a choice and then point the finger at NS? With KDE you can uninstall whatever you want... With MS ummm... Too bad!!!
If IE was removed HTML help, HTML folders etc would stop working, and don't tell me Microsoft should not have added them (just for netscape eh?), they're very cool, and a smart move, who's going to go and invent a new format when you have HTML and DHTML?
My problem isn't that MS added these features it's that there is no way to disable them or not install them in the first place. Of course then that would give another app a chance to flourish and possibly develop into another OS cos of their APIs! (horror) These "very cool" features have been shown to be a real anchor around Window's neck when it comes to performance. What if I want to make my computer faster by making sure that doesn't have this my-active-desktop-is-a-webpage crap??? Nope, can't do it. And it's all cos NS has their own APIs and MS gets really testy about that! MS wants the "Freedom to Innovate" at their own pace but squashes everyone else who would come up with their own innovations.
If you don't want to use IE for your browser, you have the *choice* to use netscape (or opera or...), Windows does not stop you from doing that.
Windows doesn't stop you but Microsoft sure gets testy about it... I seem to remember MS threatening to sue Gateway and several other big OEMs for having the audacity to preinstall NS on their machines along side IE. All because those OEMs wanted to give their customers more than initial choice for a browser. Is that really so bad?? Bottom line is that with MS you don't have the choices that you have in *nix and several other OSes.
The point is microsoft WANTS HTML help in their product, and they have IE technology (it's just a bunch of dlls) that they can use to do exactly that.
What if *I* DON'T want HTML help or any of the other bells and whistles that Bill summarily shoves down our throats... Too bad for us I spose. I thought MS was all for freedom? Oh yes, that's right... Only *their* freedoms...
"To take Microsoft's example."
It's almost always a bad idea to take anything from MS... ;)
"If a car + engine are one product, then how come I can buy an engine seperately?"
This comparison is unsound which makes your analysis flawed and here's why... An engine is a vital part of a car and without one a car is useless. Windows can certainly run without IE (one of the govt's witnesses uninstalled IE) and therefore isn't vital to Windows' operation. Windows certainly isn't useless without IE as a car is without an engine. A better comparison would be that of a car and it's radio. A radio is a little extra that's added to your car by the car manufacturer just as IE is an extra to Windows. Can you get a car without a radio? Sure, if you want. Can you take out the radio that came with your car or get different a kind of radio to put in your car? Yep. Can you get Windows without IE? errr... Can you easily uninstall IE? hrmmm... If we saw Ford installing radios that could only be replaced with a newer Ford radio the uproar coming from those Low Rider Truck Magazines (not to mention everyone else) causes my bitchometer to go off the scale.
"Just cause IE can come as a seperate product, doesn't mean it isn't an important part of Windows 98."
Evidently not that important a part of since one of the government witnesses managed to completely uninstall IE from Windows. Funny that this "important part of Windows" didn't start binding itself to Windows until v4.0 of IE.
I'd also like to mention that when IE 4.0 first came out, during the install process MS didn't tell you that you wouldn't be able to uninstall IE 4. Removing IE from the control panel would break your system with extreme prejudice. Truly that is evil...
"Just cause vi can come as a seperate component doesn't mean it isn't an important part of Unix."
The point is that with *nix you have a choice! You can easily remove vi if you like but it's not that easy to remove IE thanks to our friends in Redmond. But then again Microsoft has never been about choice or freedom for the consumer. MS has always been about building a bunker in the OS market (or whatever else they can get their claws into) so that consumers don't have any choices and Ft. Redmond is unassailable by any competitors.