Scrollbars in Mozilla (apart from the Big One in browser windows) have a habit of dissapearing at random times. Try resizing the window/dragging a sidebar/in some other way convincing it that it needs to rerender that section, and poof! the scrollbar is back. Twil be a miricle when this bug finally gets fixed.
I'd like to see a "stop this loading" context menu item that would allow one to selectively prevent a given image, movie, flash animation, etc. from continuing to download. Something like this was availible and worked for images in a build I tried early last year, but now it seems to have totally dissapeared.
Beyond that, I don't think new features are critical. A few UI enhancements are in order, and fixing Mail&News until it's really usable is a must, but I consider Mozilla to be basically done right now. I've been using Mozilla as my main browser and my only newsreader since the first 0.9 release, and it works (nearly) perfectly. (Read "Nearly" as "sometimes my email gets oddly corrupted".)
What do you think Slashdot is about? It's OPINION. My opinion, your opinion, and the opinion of those who post the stories. This is not a place for careful just-the-facts journalism. What do you want him to do, post the story then reply to it?
All your opinion are belong to us
You have no chance to make up your own mind
Ha Ha Ha Ha
Annoyed note: Since when was shouting illegal? I tried to post a legitimate all-caps CATS imitation and the thing screams at me about yelling. I know yelling, it's just not a good parody without all caps. CENSORSHIP! YOU HAVE INFRINGED ON MY RIGHTS, TACO.
This article ignores one of the findamental differences between software and other types of products: it can be copied at no cost. When I give you a copy of free software that I've written, I lost nothing. Nobody takes anything from me, and parasites do not damage or weaken the host in any way.
--PapaZit
In the view of Microsoft, what is lost is the potential to profit by selling what you've just given away. Not gaining money in the future is the same as having someone take it from you now. Therefor GPL==theft. This is what M$ is trying to say.
There is actually quite a bit of evidence that the bible's account of jesus' life, death and resurrection is accurate, as recorded in the NT...
--DivineOb
'Evidence' of jesus does not equal existence of god.
No one (who is sane and intelligent) disputes the existence of someone who has become known as the central figure in some christian myths about their god. So they say 'Jesus', which may or may not be remotely close to the name the fellow had. So he could walk on water, turn water to wine, and shoot lightening bolts from his fingertips. There's about as much evidence of the lightening as there is of the others. If we want to talk evidence then we can probably all agree... at least mostly. Evidence is also != to corrolation of some of the wackier bits of the new testament.
> Greenfield wrote this book (out in paperback for $12 bucks) because he found his own time
"for $12 bucks" is actually "for twelve dollars bucks". People always make this mistake. Yes, it does seem wrong to use numerals in this respect, as with "for 12 bucks"--just as wrong as "for $12" seems--but it is correct. Or, I should say, MORE correct. One should nearly always represent digits in full-text form when writing this way. This is eminently readable, and not nearly so confusing for the author.
All of your points are good, but there's one thing you fail to consider: Micro$oft is betting their life on this thing. It WILL take off this time because M$ will MAKE it happen. This is no Bob, this is all of their eggs (or at least the great majority) being placed in one basket.
It's the prisoners dilemma all over again. The only way to solve the prisoners dilemma is to get together with the other prisoners before hand, and even then it's not certain things will go as planned. Getting together with a few million people is difficult.
Polotics is about ambiguity. They all get up and make their speeches. They say nothing when they talk, and they mean nothing. One can point out the winners early on, it's not hard. The ones that speak the longest and say the least win. The ones who can talk for five minutes and circle around to meaning nothing will win. People don't want ideas, or philiosphy. They want utopia. But if you promise utopia to own person, it will seem like hell to another. So you promise part of utopia, and mumble over the resr in a convincing way. You start, then stop, and let people assume you're on their side. You need to say nothing while talking to everyone. Support no one and agree with everyone. The person who is underhanded enough, slmeiy enough, has the least self respect, and is generally unclear as to what they mean, that person will get elected president every time. Look at the debates. No questions get answered, not really. All debaters pick three or four points, and at every question talk for a minute, and then make their point for three minutes. It's always one of their same three points. They never answer questions, yet because they do make points people applaud. When I get a little money I will find a nice european monarchy, somewhere that doesn't even pretend to let its citizens have a voice in government, and move there. That will be pleasant.
The command line is the ultimate user interface. I'm serious. Want to do something? Tell the computer. You don't need to remember which menu it's under, menus sort actions by some abstract connection between them that only the programmer can see. You don't have to worry about which window is "active" since there is only the one. I could go on but I must quickly come to the point. The only small drawback to the command line is that you have to know the command. Why? Because the computer is a very literal machine, if you say OPEN MYDOC.TXT (supposing that is a valid command) it will work beautifully, but if you forget type FETCH MYDOC.TXT the computer wont know what you're talkng about. The solution is NOT to put a menu with a "save" entry that sends the correct command! The solution is to make the computer be able to figure out what every command means. Don't hardcode ANY commands in, instead write a natural speech recognition program, have it intercept the command, figure out what you mean, and invoke the most probable function. If it can't decide which is better, have it prompt the user ("Do you mean 'open mydoc.txt' or 'call my doctor'?"). You're smart people, you can see that the next thing would be to remove the keyboard and speak the command. Sure sure, but that's only for convenience. Typing would do just as well. Most everybody can use a keyboard, or learn quickly.
The cluttered room is the best metaphor for organizing files. In a room it's easy to seperate things out by location. "In THAT corner is my porn collection, and in THAT corner is the book I'm writing." No filenames required there, very intuitive. So what you do is put on some of them fancy VR glasses. I'm not talking about total-imersion 3D looks-like-reality stuff. Just glasses you can see through. Overlay on these glasses, and thus on your vision, bits of a computer (think bright, neon colored, floating objects). Put on a glove that the computer knows where is, and viola! One can now manipulate and sort files. Combine with this voice-recognition and smart programs that do what you mean and not what you say, and you have the best user experience yet. Leave your files laying all over the world! Walk to them if you like, or ask the computer to fetch them to your location. Put data (images, text, etc.) in floating boxes! Walk around and manipulate it by speaking/typing/reaching out and grabbing.
Sure, some of this isn't technically possible just now, but it could be. Even if it never is done, some parts would be bloody good things to have.
Re:But do you want universal access by company PC
on
Universal Access
·
· Score: 1
I concur and I would add, in a somewhat naive fashion, what about better salaries? This company-giving-away-PCs charity sort of thing is nice (conspiracy and surveillance theories aside) but getting more money allows workers to buy PCs, get access from any provider they want or, maybe, forget about the computer and get a whole lot of books or other educational materials. I don't want to sound like a hardcore capitalist but more money can buy them more freedom. What about better distribution of the company earnings? Charity is ok but giving the people the economic means to make their own informed decisions on what, if any, computer to buy and what ISP to choose is, IMO, much better.
If you buy a man lunch you know he eats. If you give him money and say "Buy lunch" than there is a large possability he will retire to the strip club around the corner.
This is true in your limited experience only. You must realize that 90% of the time the people calling tech support are idiots. There are thousands of people (such as myself) who don't knowthings, and yet never call tech support because they point and click till they get the desired result. Sure, the idiots who call you don't, but that's because theya re idiots. Most end users are not THAT stupid. Most of them know little enough to have to figure things out, but know enough that they feel comfortable clicking around and seeing what happens. The obviousness part is that everything you can interact with, toggle, or whatever, can be seen on the screen.
Yes, but to both groups "head" is a pretty neutral word. Using it one way in the wrong group will only result in confusion and embarrasment, at worst. Using "hacker" the right way in the wrong group could result in serious, and seriously bad, events. Like... arrest, general distrust, loss of a job, etc. Or, in the other group, it could result in scorn.
The toughest problem has to be the power source. It has to have a very high energy density, and right now, there's no tech really suitable for that.
I'll hold my breath and wait for lithium to get better. If they can figure a way for it to stop buring up when used in large quantities, then it would work.
It seems to me that there are exactly two problems with online music, and more specifically MP3s. These two problems are really part of one bigger problem: Money.
There are three points to music. The first is for the music to be made, and all the joy that goes into that (that point is never going to be a problem). The second is to have people hear the music. The third is to make money with the music.
The music industry sprang up around the Second point. They helped people hear the music. The byproduct of the industry satisfied the Third point. Now we have the internet, the internet helps people hear music. But the internet lets music be heard for free, which brings us to the first problem: The Artist Isn't Making Money.
Several workable solutions to this have been proposed. Here's mine: Make a sort of Open Music liscense. Have it say that the music can be freely given away and distributed by anyone to anyone using any means as long as there is no proffit involved (compensation for cost of reproduction is not proffit). But have it also say that should any proffit be made, 10% (or so) must be sent to the artist. Just my personal pet solution.
The problem with this solution, as with all the others, brings us to the second problem: The Music Industry Isn't Making Money.
For this problem there are some solutions. The music industry has propposed some themselves, such as making "pirating" of music illegal.
The point to all of this: The music industry and the music fans can not open a civil dialogue because there are no desireable solutions that involve the music industry getting billions. This is not a problem, the music industry as we know it has almost outlived its usefulness. The problem arises because the music industry isn't willing to give up power, give up money, and die.
In conclusion, there can be no compromises. The only way to end this is to battle the music industry in courts and win until they run out of money. If we just sit by and mind our own business (even stop buying music that the music industry sells) then the music industry will lobby until it can't be gotten rid of.
Like many Americans, John Katz makes the mistake of thinking that US law applies outside the US. Jon was not questioned under the DMCA, which obviously has no authority in Norway. He was questioned under Norwegian intellectual property statutes.
Companies are multinational and getting multinationaler. Soon they will control whatever local government you have.
Second, the United States bares few similarities to a totalitarian state for a single vital reason: the "evil corporations" which control a large amount of our daily lives do NOT have identical agendas, and are not necessarily friendly to each other. In short, they are not the kind of unified power which must exist in order for a government to be called totalitarian. While it may seem from time to time that corporations are allied against the common man, the only way they can weather competition is by pleasing us, the masses. Thus, while one corporation will lobby for an issue to save itself, another will lobby against it to improve its market share.
Civil disobedience is not always very effective, IMO it actually hurts more that it helps. Especially if it is run by this crowd. No flames intended. Look, how do you think it would appear if a bunch of slashdotters and the like engaged in some sort of hacktivism? You would come off as just a bunch of l33t script kiddies and be spun to be the bad guys. Look at what happened at WTO in Seattle.
The problem is that few of us want to make use of the system (since it does suck) to change things, we'd rather ignore the system. The problem is that it wont ignore us. We need to use the system until such time as we can make it irrelevent. But, personally, the system makes me sick to watch, I'd never survive participaion. We need some geek who's willing to be a politician (in other words, become the enemy) for the good of all of us. Good luck getting volunteers.
Slashdot Mirror
Scrollbars in Mozilla (apart from the Big One in browser windows) have a habit of dissapearing at random times. Try resizing the window/dragging a sidebar/in some other way convincing it that it needs to rerender that section, and poof! the scrollbar is back. Twil be a miricle when this bug finally gets fixed.
I'd like to see a "stop this loading" context menu item that would allow one to selectively prevent a given image, movie, flash animation, etc. from continuing to download. Something like this was availible and worked for images in a build I tried early last year, but now it seems to have totally dissapeared.
Beyond that, I don't think new features are critical. A few UI enhancements are in order, and fixing Mail&News until it's really usable is a must, but I consider Mozilla to be basically done right now. I've been using Mozilla as my main browser and my only newsreader since the first 0.9 release, and it works (nearly) perfectly. (Read "Nearly" as "sometimes my email gets oddly corrupted".)
Shouldn't that be
s/windows/unix/gi
?
Can you read text very well that way? I know the pron must be fantastic, but what about the eyestrain?
What do you think Slashdot is about? It's OPINION. My opinion, your opinion, and the opinion of those who post the stories. This is not a place for careful just-the-facts journalism. What do you want him to do, post the story then reply to it?
You have no chance to make up your own mind
Ha Ha Ha Ha
Annoyed note: Since when was shouting illegal? I tried to post a legitimate all-caps CATS imitation and the thing screams at me about yelling. I know yelling, it's just not a good parody without all caps. CENSORSHIP! YOU HAVE INFRINGED ON MY RIGHTS, TACO.
This article ignores one of the findamental differences between software and other types of products: it can be copied at no cost. When I give you a copy of free software that I've written, I lost nothing. Nobody takes anything from me, and parasites do not damage or weaken the host in any way.
--PapaZit
In the view of Microsoft, what is lost is the potential to profit by selling what you've just given away. Not gaining money in the future is the same as having someone take it from you now. Therefor GPL==theft. This is what M$ is trying to say.
There is actually quite a bit of evidence that the bible's account of jesus' life, death and resurrection is accurate, as recorded in the NT...
--DivineOb
'Evidence' of jesus does not equal existence of god.
No one (who is sane and intelligent) disputes the existence of someone who has become known as the central figure in some christian myths about their god. So they say 'Jesus', which may or may not be remotely close to the name the fellow had. So he could walk on water, turn water to wine, and shoot lightening bolts from his fingertips. There's about as much evidence of the lightening as there is of the others. If we want to talk evidence then we can probably all agree... at least mostly. Evidence is also != to corrolation of some of the wackier bits of the new testament.
> Greenfield wrote this book (out in paperback for $12 bucks) because he found his own time
"for $12 bucks" is actually "for twelve dollars bucks". People always make this mistake. Yes, it does seem wrong to use numerals in this respect, as with "for 12 bucks"--just as wrong as "for $12" seems--but it is correct. Or, I should say, MORE correct. One should nearly always represent digits in full-text form when writing this way. This is eminently readable, and not nearly so confusing for the author.
Oh ye of little faith. The real translation is: When Microsoft goes under.
All of your points are good, but there's one thing you fail to consider: Micro$oft is betting their life on this thing. It WILL take off this time because M$ will MAKE it happen. This is no Bob, this is all of their eggs (or at least the great majority) being placed in one basket.
Actually, Gates is more like the Emperor. Maybe Ballmer or one of the other high-up execs is Vader.
Hmmm... Linus Skywalker, Eric S Kenobi... Princess Stallman?
It's the prisoners dilemma all over again. The only way to solve the prisoners dilemma is to get together with the other prisoners before hand, and even then it's not certain things will go as planned. Getting together with a few million people is difficult.
Polotics is about ambiguity. They all get up and make their speeches. They say nothing when they talk, and they mean nothing. One can point out the winners early on, it's not hard. The ones that speak the longest and say the least win. The ones who can talk for five minutes and circle around to meaning nothing will win. People don't want ideas, or philiosphy. They want utopia. But if you promise utopia to own person, it will seem like hell to another. So you promise part of utopia, and mumble over the resr in a convincing way. You start, then stop, and let people assume you're on their side. You need to say nothing while talking to everyone. Support no one and agree with everyone. The person who is underhanded enough, slmeiy enough, has the least self respect, and is generally unclear as to what they mean, that person will get elected president every time. Look at the debates. No questions get answered, not really. All debaters pick three or four points, and at every question talk for a minute, and then make their point for three minutes. It's always one of their same three points. They never answer questions, yet because they do make points people applaud. When I get a little money I will find a nice european monarchy, somewhere that doesn't even pretend to let its citizens have a voice in government, and move there. That will be pleasant.
The only small drawback to the command line is that you have to know the command. Why? Because the computer is a very literal machine, if you say OPEN MYDOC.TXT (supposing that is a valid command) it will work beautifully, but if you forget type FETCH MYDOC.TXT the computer wont know what you're talkng about. The solution is NOT to put a menu with a "save" entry that sends the correct command! The solution is to make the computer be able to figure out what every command means. Don't hardcode ANY commands in, instead write a natural speech recognition program, have it intercept the command, figure out what you mean, and invoke the most probable function. If it can't decide which is better, have it prompt the user ("Do you mean 'open mydoc.txt' or 'call my doctor'?").
You're smart people, you can see that the next thing would be to remove the keyboard and speak the command. Sure sure, but that's only for convenience. Typing would do just as well. Most everybody can use a keyboard, or learn quickly.
The cluttered room is the best metaphor for organizing files. In a room it's easy to seperate things out by location. "In THAT corner is my porn collection, and in THAT corner is the book I'm writing." No filenames required there, very intuitive.
So what you do is put on some of them fancy VR glasses. I'm not talking about total-imersion 3D looks-like-reality stuff. Just glasses you can see through. Overlay on these glasses, and thus on your vision, bits of a computer (think bright, neon colored, floating objects). Put on a glove that the computer knows where is, and viola! One can now manipulate and sort files. Combine with this voice-recognition and smart programs that do what you mean and not what you say, and you have the best user experience yet. Leave your files laying all over the world! Walk to them if you like, or ask the computer to fetch them to your location. Put data (images, text, etc.) in floating boxes! Walk around and manipulate it by speaking/typing/reaching out and grabbing.
Sure, some of this isn't technically possible just now, but it could be. Even if it never is done, some parts would be bloody good things to have.
If you buy a man lunch you know he eats. If you give him money and say "Buy lunch" than there is a large possability he will retire to the strip club around the corner.
This is true in your limited experience only. You must realize that 90% of the time the people calling tech support are idiots. There are thousands of people (such as myself) who don't knowthings, and yet never call tech support because they point and click till they get the desired result. Sure, the idiots who call you don't, but that's because theya re idiots. Most end users are not THAT stupid. Most of them know little enough to have to figure things out, but know enough that they feel comfortable clicking around and seeing what happens. The obviousness part is that everything you can interact with, toggle, or whatever, can be seen on the screen.
The people who don't know the difference can arrest me. Ignoring them will only make things more difficult later on.
Yes, but to both groups "head" is a pretty neutral word. Using it one way in the wrong group will only result in confusion and embarrasment, at worst.
Using "hacker" the right way in the wrong group could result in serious, and seriously bad, events. Like... arrest, general distrust, loss of a job, etc. Or, in the other group, it could result in scorn.
I'll hold my breath and wait for lithium to get better. If they can figure a way for it to stop buring up when used in large quantities, then it would work.
There are three points to music. The first is for the music to be made, and all the joy that goes into that (that point is never going to be a problem). The second is to have people hear the music. The third is to make money with the music.
The music industry sprang up around the Second point. They helped people hear the music. The byproduct of the industry satisfied the Third point. Now we have the internet, the internet helps people hear music. But the internet lets music be heard for free, which brings us to the first problem: The Artist Isn't Making Money.
Several workable solutions to this have been proposed. Here's mine: Make a sort of Open Music liscense. Have it say that the music can be freely given away and distributed by anyone to anyone using any means as long as there is no proffit involved (compensation for cost of reproduction is not proffit). But have it also say that should any proffit be made, 10% (or so) must be sent to the artist. Just my personal pet solution.
The problem with this solution, as with all the others, brings us to the second problem: The Music Industry Isn't Making Money.
For this problem there are some solutions. The music industry has propposed some themselves, such as making "pirating" of music illegal.
The point to all of this: The music industry and the music fans can not open a civil dialogue because there are no desireable solutions that involve the music industry getting billions . This is not a problem, the music industry as we know it has almost outlived its usefulness. The problem arises because the music industry isn't willing to give up power, give up money, and die.
In conclusion, there can be no compromises. The only way to end this is to battle the music industry in courts and win until they run out of money. If we just sit by and mind our own business (even stop buying music that the music industry sells) then the music industry will lobby until it can't be gotten rid of.
Companies are multinational and getting multinationaler. Soon they will control whatever local government you have.
Mergers. I don't think I need to explain.
The problem is that few of us want to make use of the system (since it does suck) to change things, we'd rather ignore the system. The problem is that it wont ignore us. We need to use the system until such time as we can make it irrelevent. But, personally, the system makes me sick to watch, I'd never survive participaion. We need some geek who's willing to be a politician (in other words, become the enemy) for the good of all of us.
Good luck getting volunteers.