In general if you double the pool of users that can be infected, then you also double the number of users that will be infected.
Depends on the type of malware. If we're talking about a trojan that gets itself installed by social engineering ("Hey, check this out!"), then you're correct. If we're talking about an actual worm, which exploits a flaw in the chat client to spread without user interaction, chances are that the Yahoo and MSN clients are going to have different vulnerabilities. In that case, a worm would either have to contain multiple exploits, or would find its effectiveness chopped in half since only half of its targets would be vulnerable.
It's probably just as well -- mixed case tends to confuse people. Look at all the people who still write about "FireFox" (with the second F capitalized) instead of "Firefox."
Anyway, the good thing about this name change for the free version is that it'll match the domain name of the website!
the producers are blaming the critics for giving it a bad review.
OK, critics sometimes do miss the point. It's not uncommon for a newspaper to assign the critic who likes family dramas to review the latest sci-fi extravaganza, in which case a bad review means nothing more than that the critic wasn't in the target audience for the film.
That said, if Lord of the Rings: The Musical really was as bad as the reviews suggested, the problem isn't the reviews, but the show. In that case, the bad reviews are only a symptom.
Has anyone here seen the show? I remember the reviews were terrible, but Toronto is a little out of my way...
1. Microsoft IE 83.05% 2. Mozilla Firefox 12.93% 3. Apple Safari 1.84% 4. Opera 1.00% 5. Netscape 0.16%
Country-by country stats are at the link. Among the countries surveyed, Opera is most popular in Australia (4.69%) and Safari is most popular in the USA (3.28%).
It's not clear whether they lump Konqueror in with Safari or "other," which doesn't appear on the list.
people would rather have a fast browser that can use extentions than a slow browser with everything in it by default.
And yet there's ample evidence that it's possible to have a fast browser with everything in it by default, so I don't think those are the only choices...
Wait, was that inartweb or intraweb? I know one has pictures of cats and Amazons, and the other is what you log into at work, but I always get them confused...
It doesn't take much to get Firefox to grow to 1GB in memory footprint and start causing my system to thrash.
At first I couldn't imagine what could possibly make Firefox use 1 GB of memory, but then I realized that's probably the average size of a typical MySpace page...
Yet it's safe to say that far more Americans have heard about flag burning than the laws that may soon reshape cyberspace.
I don't think it's too cynical to say that's probably intentional. Flag burning seems to be one of those hot-button issues that conservative politicians trot out when they want to (a) drum up votes or (b) distract people from other issues. (Liberals have their own hot-button issues, though these days the conservatives seem to be punching them just fine from the other side.)
Tell me why a non-technical end user should have to monitor memeory use at all.
They shouldn't. For the end user, the issue isn't whether Firefox leaks memory, but whether Firefox leaks enough memory to impact performance.
That depends greatly on your usage patterns (how long you leave it running, how many tabs you typically have open at a time, how many other apps and services you run, etc.), which extensions you use, how much RAM your computer has, etc. If your scenario is such that the leaked memory doesn't get bad enough to impact performance, it doesn't matter whether Task Manager shows Firefox using an insane amount of memory.
Just to clarify, I'm not saying that the memory leaks don't matter in the abstract. I do think Mozilla should continue tracking them down and fixing them. But if you can only see the problem in Task Manager, and not in actual performance, then it's not a critical issue in that particular scenario.
And the real beta will probably go out to the mirrors, thereby avoiding the DDOS problem... or rather, it would, if people were willing to wait a few days!
With every release Firefox has gotten more and more bloated
I always wonder what releases people are including when they say things like this. There have only been two full releases so far: 1.0 and 1.5. If those are the only ones you're counting, there's only one release in which Firefox could get "more bloated" -- 1.5. So talking about "with every release" seems kind of disingenuous. Even including the 2.0 series, that's only two jumps: 1.0 to 1.5, and 1.5 to 2.0.
Or are you including alphas, pre-alphas, and betas? 1.0 being "more bloated" than 0.9, and 0.9 being "more bloated" than 0.8, and so on?
They're betas, or more technology previews, or whatever, but not RCs.
It's a release candidate FOR THE BETA.
As in they think it might be worth releasing as a beta.
Mozilla seems to be going this route: Alpha --> Beta Release Candidate --> Beta --> Release Candidate --> Final, with hourly/nightly/etc. builds in between.
This stubborn attitude among the Moz community that... integration with Windows authentication == bad
Mozilla has included NTLM authentication for years. Even non-Windows versions have supported it since November '03, a year before Firefox 1.0 shipped.
Admittedly, I haven't tested this since we don't have a windows-auth-based intranet, but assuming it works... is there some other aspect of Windows authentication that you're thinking of?
Mime-types fail due to not being actually encoded on-filesystem
That's what meta-data is for. While I'm not a big fan of Mac OS Classic, this is one thing they did right: storing the file type in the file metadata (like the modification time, access time, and read/write permissions), instead of in the name.
I always felt it was too bad that OS X dropped the creator/owner types in favor of filename extensions, though I understand it was probably a good move from a compatibility standpoint. (That, and moving away from the resource/data fork model, made it much easier to transfer files among Windows, Mac, and *nix computers.) It felt like a step backward, though -- it would have been better in the long run if Windows and various Unix-like operating systems (and the filesystems they use) had added filetype metadata, rather than Mac OS dropping it.
Hmm, now that I think about it, that might be the correct usage. I mean, consider other political parties that are also used to refer to types of politics, such as Libertarian. A Libertarian is a member of the Libertarian Party, while a libertarian is someone who believes in minimal government and free-market capitalism, but could be a member of another party or none at all.
So, by that standard, a Nazi (capitalized) would be someone who is actually a neo-Nazi of some sort, while a nazi (lowercase) would be someone who is overly strict and authoritarian.
Of course, then you have to take into account that the word Nazi is a recent import from German, which capitalizes all nouns. This calls into question whether the word has been sufficiently anglicized to take on English spelling conventions. Or maybe I'm just overthinking the whole thing. Where's Godwin when you need him?
...but a basic message forum doesn't track people by relationships, which is what the patent describes:
A method and apparatus for calculating, displaying and acting upon relationships in a social network is described. A computer system collects descriptive data about various individuals and allows those individuals to indicate other individuals with whom they have a personal relationship. The descriptive data and the relationship data are integrated and processed to reveal the series of social relationships connecting any two individuals within a social network. The pathways connecting any two individuals can be displayed. Further, the social network itself can be displayed to any number of degrees of separation. A user of the system can determine the optimal relationship path (i.e., contact pathway) to reach desired individuals. A communications tool allows individuals in the system to be introduced (or introduce themselves) and initiate direct communication. [emphasis added]
That's well beyond the scope of IRC or message boards. Slashdot's friends/foes system goes a little bit in that direction, but only handles one degree at a time from what I can tell. Same with, say, LiveJournal's friends system. The abstract does, however, describe exactly the model I remember Six Degrees promoting back in the late 1990s.
Then they'll buy out Kevin Bacon when he screams prior art.
Actually, SixDegrees.com would be a great example of prior art. The company folded in 2001, a year before Friendster launched, and two years before Friendster applied for the patent (June 2003)
I hoped they would rename all there stors Smart. "Shop smart shot S mart"
Believe me, everyone I know hoped that. I guess they thought pesky things like brand recognition were more important than the in-joke to end all in-jokes.
Does this mean that someone like me who REFUSES to use Paypal can never buy anything on eBay, because I must go through their payment system?
No, because they explicitly allow a number of other payment options, including credit cards, personal checks, money orders, cash (but only for in-person transactions)... and even a number of other online payment systems. Bidpay comes to mind.
Additionally, all the wording doesn't actually say the transaction can't be completed that way -- just that the seller can't offer it. The buyer could offer to send cash through the mail, but the seller can't request it. In theory, if the buyer offers to pay via Google Checkout, the seller isn't violating the policy, as long as the seller isn't the one to suggest it. Take this with a grain of salt, though, as I have no intention of testing this interpretation myself...
There's nothing arbitrary about the use of "a" vs. "the." "a" is the indefinite article, and "the" is the definite article.
Example:
"I want a car" means that the speaker just wants some car, any car. He might have something more specific in mind, but if so, he isn't telling you.
"I want the car" means that the speaker wants some specific car, or type of car. Further details are likely provided in the surrounding context, such as "If you get the house, then..."
I have, however, seen the same post -- with the same punchline -- prior to the date of the blog entry. In fact, IIRC I first saw the turned-into-German punchline in a forwarded email when I was in college, which means this piece was floating around the net in the mid-to-late 1990s.
The earliest reference I could find, however, was November 2002, so I could be mistaken about the timeframe.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on the type of malware. If we're talking about a trojan that gets itself installed by social engineering ("Hey, check this out!"), then you're correct. If we're talking about an actual worm, which exploits a flaw in the chat client to spread without user interaction, chances are that the Yahoo and MSN clients are going to have different vulnerabilities. In that case, a worm would either have to contain multiple exploits, or would find its effectiveness chopped in half since only half of its targets would be vulnerable.
I missed the whole SuSE --> SUSE switch.
It's probably just as well -- mixed case tends to confuse people. Look at all the people who still write about "FireFox" (with the second F capitalized) instead of "Firefox."
Anyway, the good thing about this name change for the free version is that it'll match the domain name of the website!
Classic blunders.... Ah, yes! As I recall, the most famous is never get involved in a flame war in Asia....
OK, critics sometimes do miss the point. It's not uncommon for a newspaper to assign the critic who likes family dramas to review the latest sci-fi extravaganza, in which case a bad review means nothing more than that the critic wasn't in the target audience for the film.
That said, if Lord of the Rings: The Musical really was as bad as the reviews suggested, the problem isn't the reviews, but the show. In that case, the bad reviews are only a symptom.
Has anyone here seen the show? I remember the reviews were terrible, but Toronto is a little out of my way...
(Re: Sluggy Freelance) That was my first thought as well....
Follow the trail of links!
Here's OneStat's press release, which cites these worldwide stats:
1. Microsoft IE 83.05%
2. Mozilla Firefox 12.93%
3. Apple Safari 1.84%
4. Opera 1.00%
5. Netscape 0.16%
Country-by country stats are at the link. Among the countries surveyed, Opera is most popular in Australia (4.69%) and Safari is most popular in the USA (3.28%).
It's not clear whether they lump Konqueror in with Safari or "other," which doesn't appear on the list.
And yet there's ample evidence that it's possible to have a fast browser with everything in it by default, so I don't think those are the only choices...
Wait, was that inartweb or intraweb? I know one has pictures of cats and Amazons, and the other is what you log into at work, but I always get them confused...
At first I couldn't imagine what could possibly make Firefox use 1 GB of memory, but then I realized that's probably the average size of a typical MySpace page...
I don't think it's too cynical to say that's probably intentional. Flag burning seems to be one of those hot-button issues that conservative politicians trot out when they want to (a) drum up votes or (b) distract people from other issues. (Liberals have their own hot-button issues, though these days the conservatives seem to be punching them just fine from the other side.)
They shouldn't. For the end user, the issue isn't whether Firefox leaks memory, but whether Firefox leaks enough memory to impact performance.
That depends greatly on your usage patterns (how long you leave it running, how many tabs you typically have open at a time, how many other apps and services you run, etc.), which extensions you use, how much RAM your computer has, etc. If your scenario is such that the leaked memory doesn't get bad enough to impact performance, it doesn't matter whether Task Manager shows Firefox using an insane amount of memory.
Just to clarify, I'm not saying that the memory leaks don't matter in the abstract. I do think Mozilla should continue tracking them down and fixing them. But if you can only see the problem in Task Manager, and not in actual performance, then it's not a critical issue in that particular scenario.
And the real beta will probably go out to the mirrors, thereby avoiding the DDOS problem... or rather, it would, if people were willing to wait a few days!
I always wonder what releases people are including when they say things like this. There have only been two full releases so far: 1.0 and 1.5. If those are the only ones you're counting, there's only one release in which Firefox could get "more bloated" -- 1.5. So talking about "with every release" seems kind of disingenuous. Even including the 2.0 series, that's only two jumps: 1.0 to 1.5, and 1.5 to 2.0.
Or are you including alphas, pre-alphas, and betas? 1.0 being "more bloated" than 0.9, and 0.9 being "more bloated" than 0.8, and so on?
It's a release candidate FOR THE BETA.
As in they think it might be worth releasing as a beta.
Mozilla seems to be going this route: Alpha --> Beta Release Candidate --> Beta --> Release Candidate --> Final, with hourly/nightly/etc. builds in between.
*sigh*
I saw the story and thought, "Couldn't they just wait until the acutal beta to post this?"
Someone's jumping the gun...
Mozilla has included NTLM authentication for years. Even non-Windows versions have supported it since November '03, a year before Firefox 1.0 shipped.
Admittedly, I haven't tested this since we don't have a windows-auth-based intranet, but assuming it works... is there some other aspect of Windows authentication that you're thinking of?
That's what meta-data is for. While I'm not a big fan of Mac OS Classic, this is one thing they did right: storing the file type in the file metadata (like the modification time, access time, and read/write permissions), instead of in the name.
I always felt it was too bad that OS X dropped the creator/owner types in favor of filename extensions, though I understand it was probably a good move from a compatibility standpoint. (That, and moving away from the resource/data fork model, made it much easier to transfer files among Windows, Mac, and *nix computers.) It felt like a step backward, though -- it would have been better in the long run if Windows and various Unix-like operating systems (and the filesystems they use) had added filetype metadata, rather than Mac OS dropping it.
Hmm, now that I think about it, that might be the correct usage. I mean, consider other political parties that are also used to refer to types of politics, such as Libertarian. A Libertarian is a member of the Libertarian Party, while a libertarian is someone who believes in minimal government and free-market capitalism, but could be a member of another party or none at all.
So, by that standard, a Nazi (capitalized) would be someone who is actually a neo-Nazi of some sort, while a nazi (lowercase) would be someone who is overly strict and authoritarian.
Of course, then you have to take into account that the word Nazi is a recent import from German, which capitalizes all nouns. This calls into question whether the word has been sufficiently anglicized to take on English spelling conventions. Or maybe I'm just overthinking the whole thing. Where's Godwin when you need him?
I think we all agree on that here...
...but a basic message forum doesn't track people by relationships, which is what the patent describes:
That's well beyond the scope of IRC or message boards. Slashdot's friends/foes system goes a little bit in that direction, but only handles one degree at a time from what I can tell. Same with, say, LiveJournal's friends system. The abstract does, however, describe exactly the model I remember Six Degrees promoting back in the late 1990s.
Actually, SixDegrees.com would be a great example of prior art. The company folded in 2001, a year before Friendster launched, and two years before Friendster applied for the patent (June 2003)
Believe me, everyone I know hoped that. I guess they thought pesky things like brand recognition were more important than the in-joke to end all in-jokes.
No, because they explicitly allow a number of other payment options, including credit cards, personal checks, money orders, cash (but only for in-person transactions)... and even a number of other online payment systems. Bidpay comes to mind.
Additionally, all the wording doesn't actually say the transaction can't be completed that way -- just that the seller can't offer it. The buyer could offer to send cash through the mail, but the seller can't request it. In theory, if the buyer offers to pay via Google Checkout, the seller isn't violating the policy, as long as the seller isn't the one to suggest it. Take this with a grain of salt, though, as I have no intention of testing this interpretation myself...
There's nothing arbitrary about the use of "a" vs. "the." "a" is the indefinite article, and "the" is the definite article.
Example:
"I want a car" means that the speaker just wants some car, any car. He might have something more specific in mind, but if so, he isn't telling you.
"I want the car" means that the speaker wants some specific car, or type of car. Further details are likely provided in the surrounding context, such as "If you get the house, then..."
And raze ewe won Tweeze Denied Beef Worker Isthmus.
I have, however, seen the same post -- with the same punchline -- prior to the date of the blog entry. In fact, IIRC I first saw the turned-into-German punchline in a forwarded email when I was in college, which means this piece was floating around the net in the mid-to-late 1990s.
The earliest reference I could find, however, was November 2002, so I could be mistaken about the timeframe.