NetMeeting, SunForum, SGIMeeting and HP Visualize Conference are all based on DC-Share from Data Connection. Therefore it's not surprising that they interoperate:-)
a) The GPL specifies that build scripts need to be included
b) 360K disks are no longer a medium *customarily* used for software interchange
c) while you could argue that printed text is readable by a small number of specialised machines, a judge would take into account the usual meaning of the words in the context in which they are being used... and laugh in your face.
Jesus wanted to spread love and get other people to do the same. Understanding his existence is a moot point as long as you understand his message. "treat others as you would yourself" and whatnot. If people do that then I think they have figured out the Christianity that the person named Jesus envisioned.
Did you figure that out without reading the Bible?:-) Jesus did not come to call the world to social reform, he came to restore our broken relationship with God. The need for this restoration, and the mechanism for it, are the most vital parts of his message. The greatest commandment was not to love your neighbour as yourself, it was to love the Lord your God with all your heart. (Mark 12:29-34) And it's our failure to do this which meant Jesus had to come.
Understanding his existence is a moot point as long as you understand his message.
His coming to earth is a vital part of his message. Jesus lives a perfect life among us as a human so he was in a position to take the punishment we deserve for our rebellion against God, and enable us to love him again with all our heart. If he didn't actually come, die, and rise from the dead, Christianity is a sham and a waste of time.
The question of whether he existed or not is therefore a vital one, if you are trying to understand his message.
Also, with the recent IDN spoofing issue, Mozilla rushed out a bad hack which was supposed to be a fix, apparently just to make some nice headline in the press. And it got flamed by the rest of the world.
That Register article is wrong in almost every detail. They pulled it from the front page a few hours after it was published, and it hasn't reappeared.
Partnerships with private companies are not a good thing. I'm already suprised to hear that the default search engine is not changeable for certain locales!
That's a mistake in the article - localisers for official mozilla.org builds are allowed and encouraged to change to the localised version of Google.
What happens when another search engine comes along and people wanna change to that? Coming from the Mozilla foundation who are promoting FREEDOM this sounds WRONG! Lock-in's are bad bad bad!
You can change the search engine to anything you like.
But we have nothing written by Jesus, nothing written by eyewitnesses or assistants, nothing written about him by anyone until decades after the events are said to have taken place.
So you're assuming John wasn't written by John, and Mark wasn't written at Peter's direction, as the early church fathers attest.
If you are going to say that "written decades later" discounts it, there's a lot of ancient and modern writings you are also throwing away as worthless.
Paul gives the earliest mentions of Jesus, but provides almost no biographical detail. We know he was familiar with the story of the tomb, but that's all we know for sure.
That's all we know for sure? One of the greatest theologians ever, who understood Jesus' message and Christianity extremely well and explained aspects of it in letters to many different churches "was familiar with the story of the tomb"? Is that really all you'll give him credit for?
The gospels of Matt, Mark, Luke, and John came much later. Mark seems to have been written first, right after the razing of the temple in Jerusalem.
After the razing of the temple? I find it hard to believe that the most major event in Jewish history for hundreds of years, which was the fulfilment of prophecies made by Jesus, didn't rate even a passing mention in documents containing those prophecies which were supposedly written after it happened. Some arguments from silence are stronger than others; this one screams at you.
The Christian movement itself stays under the radar for decades.
Sure.
Things are so bad, there have been fairly mainstream, plausible attempts to show that Jesus was an entirely mythical character.
Someone showed me Remsberg's "The Christ" the other day, which attempts to do exactly that. I don't know if that's one of those you are thinking of, but if that's the best that can be done, Christianity has nothing to worry about.
Jesus is peculiar in that very few "historical figures" that have had such importance through the ages are so poorly documented.
In terms of number of writers, and numbers of consistent copies of their writings, Jesus is by far and away the best-attested historical figure of his time. I'd recommend "The Canon Of Scripture" by F.F. Bruce, which covers this territory. It's a fairly in-depth read, but it is thorough.
How do you know the homeless person who died on a street corner last week didn't live a morally spotless life?
Because no-one who is solely human can live a life totally pleasing to God. It's not possible. Ever since Adam and Eve, rebelling against God has been our default - what we do unless God is merciful towards us, reveals the truth about Jesus to us and sets us on the right road.
I betcha if Jesus was still alive, he'd smack you upside the head to wake you up, just like a zen monk would.
In TFA, it says that the Mozilla Foundation would not reveal the extent of the deal with Google.
No it doesn't. It says that I didn't reveal them. That's principally because I don't know them:-)
Having said that, I think it's perfectly reasonable for the commercial terms of the deal to be confidential, if Google wants it that way. The entire deal was confidential until the 1.0 release hit the streets, and no-one seems to mind about that.
I think he was talking about the "We have no facts about his life" thing, not the "perfect life" thing. In other words, he was saying that "If you use that logic to say we have no facts about the life of Jesus, then we have no facts about the life of ".
There needs to be a "Paid Advertising" tag attached to each and every advertisement
Er, you mean like the words "Sponsored Links", which appear clearly at the top of the vertical column of Google text ads, and to the right of the long horizontal ones?:-)
It's not adware. Adware is software which is installed to show you ads. What ads do you see in Firefox that you wouldn't see if we hadn't made the search engine deals? None. If you search using a search engine, you see that search engine's ads - but that's true whether that engine is built in, or the default, or you visit it by typing the URL.
Mozilla has created the expectation that its software serves users' interests, not the financial or business needs of the manufacturer. It's a key point in differentiating the organization and its products.
Absolutely. As I discussed in the talk I gave, there's a very fine balance.
Google as the home page looks like a technical choice by Mozilla.org and an independent endorsement of Google.
Anyone who thinks that wasn't paying too much attention. The home page is co-branded, and hosted on google.com. Obviously it's the result of a collaboration between the two organisations.
By that logic, we have no facts about the life of any historical figure.
"Henry VIII? Well, obviously he would only let people write what he wanted them to write, so we can't know anything about him at all..."
If the authors of the New Testament were his "PR people", they weren't very good at their own PR. A lot of the time, they describe themselves and each other as blind, incompetent buffoons who don't get what Jesus was on about. Not really the marks of some truth-blurring spin job.
I think people expect open source projects to be managed 'openly', too -- to have decisions discussed and publicized on mailing lists, even if there is a final arbiter.
Deals like the ones we've made with search engines would not be possible without some degree of confidentiality in making them. These companies do not want their business strategies revealed to all and sundry. And, if a deal isn't reached, they don't want to be known as "the company which didn't get a deal to be in Firefox".
You may say that the confidentiality is too high a price to pay to get the deal. That would be a consistent view; but I think, having seen the outcome and what happened, a lot of people would disagree with you.
The article implied (or I read into it) that Mozilla gave into some demand of Google's in order to get funding.
Like any business dealing, it's a negotation. Each party suggests things, and you come to an arrangement that works for both sides. No-one makes "demands".
I can't think of a single, self-aware human being that hasn't done some morally or ethically reprehensible thing at one point in his or her history. Can you?
Yes - Jesus Christ.:-) The key point is, though, that there aren't any others. He was unique.
I wouldn't look at it as "restrictions". We made a deal with a number of search companies to put them in the list of search engines shipped with official Firefox builds, and we made a deal with Google so that a modified version of their front page would be the start page for all official Firefox versions.
Meeting our end of the deal is hardly a "restriction"!
Google does host the start page in different languages, and localisers use them. The report is wrong in that respect. Don't believe everything you read:-)
I didn't reveal the full details because I don't know them:-) This is good, because I can freely speculate without giving anything away (which is what I was doing at FOSDEM).
Having said that, "open source" doesn't have to mean "everything that goes on is public". We have private security bugs, private staff meetings and confidential business deals - often because the other party wants it that way.
I'm sure the Foundation will publish all the financial records that it's required to.
Just to clarify: Google is just one of several search partners we have at the Mozilla Foundation, although (as is fairly evident from looking at the software) it is currently the one we have the closest ties with, by virtue of them hosting the home page.
"Keeping the wolf from the door" is a bit too strong - we are establishing good relationships with a number of companies, all of whom are supporting the Foundation in different ways. My comments were merely intended to say that the Foundation is not going anywhere - we'll be around for the forseeable future.
One further clarification: Firefox localisations can change to use a localised version of Google; they are not kept to using the en-US version, as the article implies.
Gerv (the speaker on whose comments the article is based)
Opera Software said they are doing so in an effort to meet the student and university need for security on the Internet.
...and to try and compete with Firefox, which is spreading like, er, wildfire in educational institutions, who have low IT budgets, a traditionally open-source-friendly culture, lots of fairly clueless users and a lack of desire to spend their time cleaning up spyware.
"Gmail using the same thing but way more advanced."
Actually, Gmail's is probably less advanced in some ways. I'd be willing to bet they cache your entire address book at the client - for this reason and many others. It's certainly too fast to be making requests when you type.
Slashdot Mirror
They won't. Email and web access are too important for commerce.
Gerv
NetMeeting, SunForum, SGIMeeting and HP Visualize Conference are all based on DC-Share from Data Connection. Therefore it's not surprising that they interoperate :-)
No, because:
a) The GPL specifies that build scripts need to be included
b) 360K disks are no longer a medium *customarily* used for software interchange
c) while you could argue that printed text is readable by a small number of specialised machines, a judge would take into account the usual meaning of the words in the context in which they are being used... and laugh in your face.
Gerv
Jesus wanted to spread love and get other people to do the same. Understanding his existence is a moot point as long as you understand his message. "treat others as you would yourself" and whatnot. If people do that then I think they have figured out the Christianity that the person named Jesus envisioned.
:-) Jesus did not come to call the world to social reform, he came to restore our broken relationship with God. The need for this restoration, and the mechanism for it, are the most vital parts of his message. The greatest commandment was not to love your neighbour as yourself, it was to love the Lord your God with all your heart. (Mark 12:29-34) And it's our failure to do this which meant Jesus had to come.
Did you figure that out without reading the Bible?
Understanding his existence is a moot point as long as you understand his message.
His coming to earth is a vital part of his message. Jesus lives a perfect life among us as a human so he was in a position to take the punishment we deserve for our rebellion against God, and enable us to love him again with all our heart. If he didn't actually come, die, and rise from the dead, Christianity is a sham and a waste of time.
The question of whether he existed or not is therefore a vital one, if you are trying to understand his message.
Gerv
Also, with the recent IDN spoofing issue, Mozilla rushed out a bad hack which was supposed to be a fix, apparently just to make some nice headline in the press. And it got flamed by the rest of the world.
That Register article is wrong in almost every detail. They pulled it from the front page a few hours after it was published, and it hasn't reappeared.
Gerv
Partnerships with private companies are not a good thing. I'm already suprised to hear that the default search engine is not changeable for certain locales!
That's a mistake in the article - localisers for official mozilla.org builds are allowed and encouraged to change to the localised version of Google.
What happens when another search engine comes along and people wanna change to that? Coming from the Mozilla foundation who are promoting FREEDOM this sounds WRONG! Lock-in's are bad bad bad!
You can change the search engine to anything you like.
Gerv
But we have nothing written by Jesus, nothing written by eyewitnesses or assistants, nothing written about him by anyone until decades after the events are said to have taken place.
So you're assuming John wasn't written by John, and Mark wasn't written at Peter's direction, as the early church fathers attest.
If you are going to say that "written decades later" discounts it, there's a lot of ancient and modern writings you are also throwing away as worthless.
Paul gives the earliest mentions of Jesus, but provides almost no biographical detail. We know he was familiar with the story of the tomb, but that's all we know for sure.
That's all we know for sure? One of the greatest theologians ever, who understood Jesus' message and Christianity extremely well and explained aspects of it in letters to many different churches "was familiar with the story of the tomb"? Is that really all you'll give him credit for?
The gospels of Matt, Mark, Luke, and John came much later. Mark seems to have been written first, right after the razing of the temple in Jerusalem.
After the razing of the temple? I find it hard to believe that the most major event in Jewish history for hundreds of years, which was the fulfilment of prophecies made by Jesus, didn't rate even a passing mention in documents containing those prophecies which were supposedly written after it happened. Some arguments from silence are stronger than others; this one screams at you.
The Christian movement itself stays under the radar for decades.
Sure.
Things are so bad, there have been fairly mainstream, plausible attempts to show that Jesus was an entirely mythical character.
Someone showed me Remsberg's "The Christ" the other day, which attempts to do exactly that. I don't know if that's one of those you are thinking of, but if that's the best that can be done, Christianity has nothing to worry about.
Gerv
it seems that an outside developer can't count on anything.
:-)
You can count on what you've always counted on - the code is Free. Nothing mozilla.org, Google, Bill Gates or anyone else can do can change that.
That said, I personally find the concept of Google and Firefox working together very exiting, and am looking forward to the result.
Me too
Gerv
Jesus is peculiar in that very few "historical figures" that have had such importance through the ages are so poorly documented.
In terms of number of writers, and numbers of consistent copies of their writings, Jesus is by far and away the best-attested historical figure of his time. I'd recommend "The Canon Of Scripture" by F.F. Bruce, which covers this territory. It's a fairly in-depth read, but it is thorough.
Gerv
How do you know the homeless person who died on a street corner last week didn't live a morally spotless life?
Because no-one who is solely human can live a life totally pleasing to God. It's not possible. Ever since Adam and Eve, rebelling against God has been our default - what we do unless God is merciful towards us, reveals the truth about Jesus to us and sets us on the right road.
I betcha if Jesus was still alive, he'd smack you upside the head to wake you up, just like a zen monk would.
He is still alive.
Gerv
In TFA, it says that the Mozilla Foundation would not reveal the extent of the deal with Google.
:-)
No it doesn't. It says that I didn't reveal them. That's principally because I don't know them
Having said that, I think it's perfectly reasonable for the commercial terms of the deal to be confidential, if Google wants it that way. The entire deal was confidential until the 1.0 release hit the streets, and no-one seems to mind about that.
Gerv
I think he was talking about the "We have no facts about his life" thing, not the "perfect life" thing. In other words, he was saying that "If you use that logic to say we have no facts about the life of Jesus, then we have no facts about the life of ".
Gerv
There needs to be a "Paid Advertising" tag attached to each and every advertisement
:-)
Er, you mean like the words "Sponsored Links", which appear clearly at the top of the vertical column of Google text ads, and to the right of the long horizontal ones?
Gerv
a Moz feature was adware
It's not adware. Adware is software which is installed to show you ads. What ads do you see in Firefox that you wouldn't see if we hadn't made the search engine deals? None. If you search using a search engine, you see that search engine's ads - but that's true whether that engine is built in, or the default, or you visit it by typing the URL.
Mozilla has created the expectation that its software serves users' interests, not the financial or business needs of the manufacturer. It's a key point in differentiating the organization and its products.
Absolutely. As I discussed in the talk I gave, there's a very fine balance.
Google as the home page looks like a technical choice by Mozilla.org and an independent endorsement of Google.
Anyone who thinks that wasn't paying too much attention. The home page is co-branded, and hosted on google.com. Obviously it's the result of a collaboration between the two organisations.
Gerv
By that logic, we have no facts about the life of any historical figure.
"Henry VIII? Well, obviously he would only let people write what he wanted them to write, so we can't know anything about him at all..."
If the authors of the New Testament were his "PR people", they weren't very good at their own PR. A lot of the time, they describe themselves and each other as blind, incompetent buffoons who don't get what Jesus was on about. Not really the marks of some truth-blurring spin job.
Gerv
I think people expect open source projects to be managed 'openly', too -- to have decisions discussed and publicized on mailing lists, even if there is a final arbiter.
Deals like the ones we've made with search engines would not be possible without some degree of confidentiality in making them. These companies do not want their business strategies revealed to all and sundry. And, if a deal isn't reached, they don't want to be known as "the company which didn't get a deal to be in Firefox".
You may say that the confidentiality is too high a price to pay to get the deal. That would be a consistent view; but I think, having seen the outcome and what happened, a lot of people would disagree with you.
Gerv
The article implied (or I read into it) that Mozilla gave into some demand of Google's in order to get funding.
Like any business dealing, it's a negotation. Each party suggests things, and you come to an arrangement that works for both sides. No-one makes "demands".
Gerv
I can't think of a single, self-aware human being that hasn't done some morally or ethically reprehensible thing at one point in his or her history. Can you?
:-) The key point is, though, that there aren't any others. He was unique.
Yes - Jesus Christ.
Gerv
I wouldn't look at it as "restrictions". We made a deal with a number of search companies to put them in the list of search engines shipped with official Firefox builds, and we made a deal with Google so that a modified version of their front page would be the start page for all official Firefox versions.
Meeting our end of the deal is hardly a "restriction"!
Gerv
Google does host the start page in different languages, and localisers use them. The report is wrong in that respect. Don't believe everything you read :-)
Gerv
I didn't reveal the full details because I don't know them :-) This is good, because I can freely speculate without giving anything away (which is what I was doing at FOSDEM).
Having said that, "open source" doesn't have to mean "everything that goes on is public". We have private security bugs, private staff meetings and confidential business deals - often because the other party wants it that way.
I'm sure the Foundation will publish all the financial records that it's required to.
Gerv
I didn't say that - it's a slip by the reporter, not by the speaker :-)
Gerv
Just to clarify: Google is just one of several search partners we have at the Mozilla Foundation, although (as is fairly evident from looking at the software) it is currently the one we have the closest ties with, by virtue of them hosting the home page.
"Keeping the wolf from the door" is a bit too strong - we are establishing good relationships with a number of companies, all of whom are supporting the Foundation in different ways. My comments were merely intended to say that the Foundation is not going anywhere - we'll be around for the forseeable future.
One further clarification: Firefox localisations can change to use a localised version of Google; they are not kept to using the en-US version, as the article implies.
Gerv
(the speaker on whose comments the article is based)
Opera Software said they are doing so in an effort to meet the student and university need for security on the Internet.
Gerv
"Gmail using the same thing but way more advanced."
Actually, Gmail's is probably less advanced in some ways. I'd be willing to bet they cache your entire address book at the client - for this reason and many others. It's certainly too fast to be making requests when you type.
Gerv