Exactly. When LiveJournal has technical problems for a few days, people don't leave LiveJournal en masse -- they wait it out. Because the whole point of being on LiveJournal is the community. Their friends, readers, etc. are all on the same service, and moving to a new one is going to involve dragging them along. On the other hand, if you and a bunch of friends do decide to leave, you'll probably end up migrating together.
Ever tried using a LiveJournal account to comment on a Myspace blog? Not gonna work. (Ironically, the people behind LiveJournal are the ones who set up OpenID, which may make this possible some day.)
This is, of course, a generalization. You can find blogs on LiveJournal, TypePad, Blogger, etc. that are aimed at a general audience and have simply chosen a hosting provider. But in most cases, you'll find that the active readers -- the ones who hold conversations in the comment threads -- are all on the same blogging service.
After weeks of tough negotiations, the president and his top advisors won two concessions from McCain: that interrogators accused of using improper methods could offer as a defense that they were acting on orders that a reasonable person would believe to be lawful, and that the U.S. government would pay their legal fees. [emphasis added]
So that means nothing obvious, like "Torture the detainee in cell XYZ," will be able to pass the "following orders" test -- any reasonable person would be aware of these laws, and the regs in the field handbook, and would recognize orders to torture someone as being illegal. The orders would have to be seriously in the gray area to be able to provide a defense -- and the bill is all about clarifying what is and is not acceptable.
Depends on how they're distributed. Mass mailings are pretty evil, because they get sent to people who don't want it and will just toss them in a landfill*. Setting up a "Free CD" kiosk at a computer store isn't so much, since only those who are interested will pick them up.
*Or find alternative uses for them. I will admit to having used AOL coasters on my coffee table in the past.
Hmm, Opera does allow you to customize the list of built-in search engines using search.ini. I haven't tried it myself, but you might be able to add a site-specific search using this as a reference: http://nontroppo.org/wiki/SearchInOpera
Actually this used to be a side effect of the Google-powered ads in Opera 7 and 8.0. You had the choice of (a) a standard-sized "dumb" ad banner in the toolbar, (b) AdSense in the toolbar, or (c) spend the money to register.
The plain banner was based on your prefs. There was a page for categories of advertising, and the ads were just chosen randomly from within those categories. (In my experience, they were most often ads to register Opera.)
With the AdSense-powered ads in the toolbar, Opera would send the current URL (unless it was SSL, HTTP Auth, had a query string, or a couple of other things) to Google, which would check to see if it had an AdSense profile for the page. If not, if would fetch it and generate one. Then it would update the ads.
So the fact is that Google used to be able* to track where you went using Opera, but no longer has that capability now that the ads have been removed. Which is kind of the opposite of your theory.
*IIRC their privacy policy stated that they didn't store this information. I'm sure you can find the policy online somewhere. And of course there's nothing to stop them from tracking every AdSense-powered page you visit, in any browser, though the same is true of any web advertising network.
I actually prefer having separate apps for email and web. I've had both Firefox and Opera crash, and I'm always glad that neither has taken down my email client with it. (I use KMail on my home PC and Thunderbird at work.)
The interface has changed immensely over the years. I first tried out Opera around 1999, and it was pretty nice. It started getting cluttered around version 5.0 (2001?) and I switched over to Mozilla (yes, it was more cluttered than the Mozilla Suite!), but version 8 has really succeeded in producing an elegant interface. There are only a couple of things that bug me, easily taken care of by a single trip through the preferences.
Good question. I remember back in the Firebird days there was talk that once it hit 1.0, they'd offer several download options -- one just the browser, one with the most commonly-used extensions (and maybe plugins too). For some reason this never materialized.
I like your idea of categorized bundles, though. Someone should definitely try putting something like that together.
Re:This is strange -- they already give $ to Mozil
on
Google to Buy Opera?
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· Score: 1
And they have a search revenue sharing deal with Opera very similar to what they have in place with Firefox (except for that thing about hiring Firefox developers to work on their own product). So they've got business relationships with both browsers already.
And then there are those of us who can't imagine why such a purchase would make sense for either company as far as business strategy goes, given the current status and relationships among Google, Opera, and Firefox.
Of course, if you'd prefer to assume it was an insult, feel free to continue ranting.
AFAIK Opera doesn't have any hooks for third-party toolbars. You can create buttons to some extent, but there isn't a way for Google, Yahoo, StumbleUpon, or anyone else to create that kind of extension for Opera.
It's all in how you read it. Heck, the guy who wrote the article said as much himself -- he doesn't think it makes any sense for Google to buy Opera, and he likes Opera.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. When LiveJournal has technical problems for a few days, people don't leave LiveJournal en masse -- they wait it out. Because the whole point of being on LiveJournal is the community. Their friends, readers, etc. are all on the same service, and moving to a new one is going to involve dragging them along. On the other hand, if you and a bunch of friends do decide to leave, you'll probably end up migrating together.
Ever tried using a LiveJournal account to comment on a Myspace blog? Not gonna work. (Ironically, the people behind LiveJournal are the ones who set up OpenID, which may make this possible some day.)
This is, of course, a generalization. You can find blogs on LiveJournal, TypePad, Blogger, etc. that are aimed at a general audience and have simply chosen a hosting provider. But in most cases, you'll find that the active readers -- the ones who hold conversations in the comment threads -- are all on the same blogging service.
What flavor?
Here's how this morning's Los Angeles Times article described it:
So that means nothing obvious, like "Torture the detainee in cell XYZ," will be able to pass the "following orders" test -- any reasonable person would be aware of these laws, and the regs in the field handbook, and would recognize orders to torture someone as being illegal. The orders would have to be seriously in the gray area to be able to provide a defense -- and the bill is all about clarifying what is and is not acceptable.
Depends on how they're distributed. Mass mailings are pretty evil, because they get sent to people who don't want it and will just toss them in a landfill*. Setting up a "Free CD" kiosk at a computer store isn't so much, since only those who are interested will pick them up.
*Or find alternative uses for them. I will admit to having used AOL coasters on my coffee table in the past.
Mark this as the first day Google started to become Big Corporate Dumb.
I thought that was yesterday, on the Google/Opera rumor?
Now I'm really confused!
Nothing -- Opera denied it in the very article /. linked to.
Outsourcing all the evil? Isn't that usually called "rendition?"
Nah, you're only 5% cooler than yesterday.
Hmm, by that criteria, you could consider Netscape 8 a distribution of Firefox as well.
I hadn't really thought of them in those terms, but you may be onto something here.
Hmm, Opera does allow you to customize the list of built-in search engines using search.ini. I haven't tried it myself, but you might be able to add a site-specific search using this as a reference: http://nontroppo.org/wiki/SearchInOpera
Actually this used to be a side effect of the Google-powered ads in Opera 7 and 8.0. You had the choice of (a) a standard-sized "dumb" ad banner in the toolbar, (b) AdSense in the toolbar, or (c) spend the money to register.
The plain banner was based on your prefs. There was a page for categories of advertising, and the ads were just chosen randomly from within those categories. (In my experience, they were most often ads to register Opera.)
With the AdSense-powered ads in the toolbar, Opera would send the current URL (unless it was SSL, HTTP Auth, had a query string, or a couple of other things) to Google, which would check to see if it had an AdSense profile for the page. If not, if would fetch it and generate one. Then it would update the ads.
So the fact is that Google used to be able* to track where you went using Opera, but no longer has that capability now that the ads have been removed. Which is kind of the opposite of your theory.
*IIRC their privacy policy stated that they didn't store this information. I'm sure you can find the policy online somewhere. And of course there's nothing to stop them from tracking every AdSense-powered page you visit, in any browser, though the same is true of any web advertising network.
The rumor was started by an ex-Yahoo exec -- not by Opera or Google -- and Opera has denied it.
...but the first versions will only run in Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox.
And let me tell you, that's going to get confusing!
I actually prefer having separate apps for email and web. I've had both Firefox and Opera crash, and I'm always glad that neither has taken down my email client with it. (I use KMail on my home PC and Thunderbird at work.)
The interface has changed immensely over the years. I first tried out Opera around 1999, and it was pretty nice. It started getting cluttered around version 5.0 (2001?) and I switched over to Mozilla (yes, it was more cluttered than the Mozilla Suite!), but version 8 has really succeeded in producing an elegant interface. There are only a couple of things that bug me, easily taken care of by a single trip through the preferences.
Seriously, why hasn't this happened already?
Good question. I remember back in the Firebird days there was talk that once it hit 1.0, they'd offer several download options -- one just the browser, one with the most commonly-used extensions (and maybe plugins too). For some reason this never materialized.
I like your idea of categorized bundles, though. Someone should definitely try putting something like that together.
And they have a search revenue sharing deal with Opera very similar to what they have in place with Firefox (except for that thing about hiring Firefox developers to work on their own product). So they've got business relationships with both browsers already.
google should(maybe they have) hire some of the firefox developers instead and help firefox along.
They already have. Ben Goodger and Darrin Fisher come to mind, but I think there are a few others.
And then there are those of us who can't imagine why such a purchase would make sense for either company as far as business strategy goes, given the current status and relationships among Google, Opera, and Firefox.
Of course, if you'd prefer to assume it was an insult, feel free to continue ranting.
AFAIK Opera doesn't have any hooks for third-party toolbars. You can create buttons to some extent, but there isn't a way for Google, Yahoo, StumbleUpon, or anyone else to create that kind of extension for Opera.
Wait for Opera 9. It'll have much better support for AJAX, it'll handle rich text editing, etc., so I'd expect it to handle GMail fine.
Wait for Opera 9. It'll have support for more AJAX stuff, and rich text editing, so it should be able to handle everything GMail wants to throw at it.
Why Gecko? Maybe the fact that they already employ several Mozilla developers?
It's all in how you read it. Heck, the guy who wrote the article said as much himself -- he doesn't think it makes any sense for Google to buy Opera, and he likes Opera.
Nokia has, at various times, licensed Opera, funded Minimo, and built their own browser using Apple's WebKit.
So at least one major company is happy to use OSS (Gecko and WebKit in this case).