Google is a for-profit corporation. Its whole reason to exist is to be greedy.
No, it's reason to exist is outlined in it's corporate charter. I'm sure "making money" is in there, but many (most?) charters also include a component that involves advancing the "public good" (which is why a lot of organizations donate to charities).
But, you know, don't let me get in the way of your blind corporation-bashing.
Google didn't come to this decision because they found their moral compass all of a sudden--otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to play censor for the government in the first place.
Alternatively, like any individual or group, they may have felt, at the time, that they could do some good by operating in China, and then realized, in retrospect, that that simply wasn't the case.
But you're right. It makes way more sense to ascribe sinister, greedy motivations to them. No company can possibly make a mistake...
The argument is that the true savings would be much greater.
Ah, I see, so the republicans feel tort reform is a magical silver bullet because, well, they say so, even though there's no numbers to prove it, but makes sense in your gut, right?
Okay, well, I suppose that's one way to run a country (who needs the CBO, anyway)...
How would you even reliably measure such a thing?
You don't. You try it in a state and see how much insurance costs go down (kinda like how Obama wants to start pilot projects for various types of reform, to see how it goes). Luckily, Texas did just that in 2003! And, drum roll please...
Texas has had the highest rate of uninsured citizens in the nation. That rate has continued to rise since 2003, and at times it has risen even faster than the rate of uninsured in the rest of the nation. In 2008, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that Texas health insurance premiums increased by 40 percent from 2001 to 2005, which was the third fastest increase in the nation.
Citation (the article itself contains citations for those claims, so really, it's a citation-by-proxy).
So, there you go, cold hard facts from a state that experimented with tort reform. But I'm sure you can find a reason to dismiss those results.
I'm actually a fan of having lots of smaller reforms.
Yeah, the only downside to this is that the Republicans would fight tooth-and-nail on every single bill, and we'd be old and gray by the time real reform was passed. The all-or-nothing approach the dems are taking has it's problems, but it gets a lot of reform done *now*, as opposed to dicking around with hundreds of separate bills.
Everybody likes to demonize one entity or another, but from what I can see there are a lot of things that each boost cost, often in a synergistic manner, but there are no silver bullets in this puzzle.
Totally agreed. But you wouldn't know that listening to a Republican go on and on about "tort reform" and "defensive medicine".
As I have pointed out [codemonkeyramblings.com], IT is as wasteful, if not more so, than the health care system.
Well, the minute IT is responsible for routinely bankrupting people because of conditions that are completely outside their realm of control, let me know. And the minute IT is responsible for truly astonishing levels of drag on the economy, placing a massive burden on the small businesses which are the engine of the American economy, well maybe then you might have a point. And when IT, like healthcare, becomes a service that everyone will, at some point in their lives, be forced to personally avail themselves, well, then your little metaphor might be worth considering.
Until then, I think it's safe to say that healthcare and IT are such drastically different industries that to compare the two is the height of idiocy.
Re:Question for the non-US based Slashdotters
on
Health Care Reform
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· Score: 1
But instead of just posting a negative comment about our health care situation, how about helping us understand how health care works in your country.
Yes, but see, then you'll get a lot of comments from people in nations with universal healthcare who basically say: "It's not perfect, but it ain't bad, and I won't go bankrupt if I get a catastrophic illness."
Then the people who like the idea of healthcare reform will say "See, I told you! Government-run healthcare is good! It can so work!". And the people who are afraid of it will say "Yeah, but the US system is the best in the world! And yours sucks because of <insert few extreme examples>. Oh, and you're a communist, anyway, and you just don't understand how awesome American and Freedom are!"
In short, it's basically pointless. The American government is, in my mind, just a microcosm of the beliefs of the American people, who are so deeply polarized on this issue that there will *never* be any agreement, as there's simply no middle ground that can be had, and certainly no swaying people who, quite honestly, probably made up their minds before Obama was ever elected.
I will also be concerned what else "they" might force down my throat.
So, how does it feel being a republican mouthpiece? Is it fun parroting lines straight from Fox News? OTOH, at least you don't have to think for yourself...
I don't understand how someone could say that tort reform is a red herring.
Probably because every actual *expert* (ie, not random slashbot) who has examined the issue has concluded that the savings are there, are real, and are pretty small relative to annual healthcare cost increases.
IOW, while tort reform is a good idea, and really should be done at some point, it most certainly is *not* the silver bullet that the republicans would have people believe, and leaving it out is a relatively minor issue given the size of the problem.
Hell, really, you should be happy tort reform isn't being addressed in this bill. The right has been bitching and complaining that the bill is simply too big! But now you want to make it bigger by adding tort reform to the mix? Why not just do that in a separate bill? It's not like it wouldn't get bipartisan support.
From your link, silicosis occurs due to particles less than 10 micrometers wide. Regolith is typically more than 30 micrometers wide.
And yet:
While lunar dust is not the same type of crystalline silica known to cause such disease, about 20 percent of the lunar regolith by weight is smaller than 20m- much of which is respirable. In addition, lunar dust has a very high surface to volume ratio and contains fully reduced (metallic) iron, present as nanometer-sized deposits within the lunar dust agglutinates, a form of iron not found in terrestrial soils.
Furthermore:
Preliminary results suggest that lunar dust simulants do, in fact, generate reactive oxygen species and so could trigger pulmonary inflammation comparable to that of SiO2.
Sure. And for all the parts of the Moon that pose an exposure risk to the moondust-o-death, if you're standing there unprotected from this evil powder, you have a far more immediate health risk to deal with.
Exactly! It's kinda like how, if I had a vacuum sealed house, I'd never ever get dust inside! Right?
I think that humans won't have too much trouble with it as far as inhaling goes - it'll get trapped in mucus as well as all the other dust we inhale.
Funny, you'd think the same thing about airborne silicon, and yet you'd be wrong:
When small silica dust particles are inhaled, they can embed themselves deeply into the tiny alveolar sacs and ducts in the lungs, where oxygen and carbon dioxide gases are exchanged. There, the lungs cannot clear out the dust by mucous or coughing.
Concrete dust has many of the properties of lunar dust.
Well, except for the whole razor-sharp-jaggies-that-never-get-worn-down-by-weather property. And the, the-whole-moon-is-covered-with-that-crap property. But yeah, other than that, it's exactly the same. oO
The reason "most people" don't care is because they haven't been bit by DRM yet.
Sure they have. Didn't you read about the recent PS3 debacle? But to the user, that wasn't a DRM failing. That was just a network/technological problem. And to most users, that's how *all* any potential DRM failings will look, because they simply aren't educated enough in the underlying technology to know what's really going on. So they'll chock it up as yet-another-technical-glitch, and then keep on playing. Because that's what people do.
Not to mention the follow-up upgrade issue. What if Firefox incorporates an old version of Theora? Suddenly I have to upgrade both the gstreamer codecs *and* Firefox? That's just flat out ridiculous.
I'm not trolling. I'm making a point and choosing to couch it in dripping sarcasm. There's a difference.
Please stop with "cheap shots" about miniscule market size, it depends entirely on which market you are talking about.
Obviously we're talking about the desktop PC market, and specifically, the intersection between the desktop PC market and the gaming demographic. The other markets you cite are *completely* beside the point, and honestly, I'm not even sure why you brought them up given the context of this discussion.
I use Linux because it's good for stuff I need to do with a computer and the fact it's been here 20-odd years is enough of a testament to it as an OS.
So do I. I'm typing this on a Linux-equipped laptop right now. But I'm not a hardcore gamer (the last game I played was Half-Life 2: Episode Two, which was released, what, 3-4 years back? And happens to work well under Wine). Gamers don't use Linux. So game companies don't target Linux. How is this surprising?
So I don't think the idea of porting games to Linux is so preposterous.
Wait, so you admit that the desktop market for Linux is tiny. And in the same breath, argue that porting games to Linux isn't "so preposterous". No offense, but you're contradicting yourself.
The simple fact is that to port a game to Linux you'll probably have to:
1) Write a new rendering pipeline unless you had the foresight to target OpenGL from the beginning (most games target DirectX, and obviously that isn't available on Linux).
2) Write new code to interface to Linux sound and peripheral libraries.
3) Implement some kind of installer.
4) Educate your developer base, support, and QA on Linux.
5) Roll out a complete Linux testbed, and that includes playtesters, to ensure that the port works as advertised.
6) Find some way to support and maintain that port across myriad distributions, kernels, etc.
And you propose they do all that to nail, what, 0.5% of the desktop gaming market?
But no, clearly the reason they don't target Linux is because you claim they can't deploy functional DRM...
Incidentally, DRM and commercial control is one of the main reasons, I believe, that there are so few commercial games released for Linux.
Oooooh, so that's the reason! It has absolutely nothing to do with the rather miniscule market size, the substantial cost of maintaining the port to service that tiny market, the cost of supporting myriad distributions, kernels, etc, the effort involved building in-house expertise in the platform, both for developers and support, etc? It's just DRM that's the big stumbling block?
Waiting before buying games has one big drawback: you're out of synch with the rest of the market.
Uhh... how is not being in "synch [sic] with the rest of the market" a drawback? If you ask me, insisting on buying the latest, greatest game the minute it comes out is for suckers and fanbois.
They don't mind how rewarding you find whatever they give you---in fact, they want you to be happy
No, what they want is for you to get your tasks finished and to not quit.
Fortunately, particularly in the US, job mobility is drastically limited by a number of factors: the current poor job market, high levels of household debt and low levels of savings (making long periods without steady income untenable), fear of losing healthcare coverage, etc. As such, employees don't want to quit in the face of mistreatment, nor do they want to get fired for not performing their jobs properly.
Consequently, employers are empowered to do the bare minimum to keep their employees around. That means crappy wages, really crappy holiday packages, no bonuses, no paid overtime, etc.
the GCSE Examination Boards phoned in and asked Mr. Balls what a "compound verb" is and he didn't know the answer - and we have people like this in control of our education system????
Uhuh. Dude, *I* couldn't tell you what a compound verb is, and as a general rule, I think my writing is at least decent. Just because you don't know the names of components of English grammar, doesn't mean you can't compose meaningful, well-written sentences. Furthermore, are you suddenly expecting the secretary of state for education to be an expert in all education topics? What if he didn't know what a partial derivative was? Or an ionic bond? Or the Newtonian equation for velocity? Would you suddenly decry educational standards in mathematics, chemistry, and physics, too?
My point is simply this: Every single generation in the history of humanity has been convinced that the next generation is somehow worse than theirs. Spelling is worse, grammar is worse, music is worse, youth crime is up, respect for elders is down, blah, blah, blah. But it's all bullshit. Studies have shown that kids today are *more* literate than their forebearers. Youth crime is down in many countries (Canada and the US in particular, I don't know about other nations). The list goes on.
So quit worrying. Seriously. The kids will be fine.
What happens when your operating system handles plugins for the user but reminds the user: "If you click Install, and you live in the United States, you are breaking the law." ? Ubuntu does exactly this for the gstreamer-plugins-ugly package.
Uh, good. That's *precisely* how this should be handled. The user should be warned of the issues with installing the codec, and then given the choice to continue. Eliminating this choice is completely antithetical to the very concept of free software.
Why do you need a package manager when browsers have been facilitating the easy installation of plugins, such as Flash, for years now?
Because the point is the browser shouldn't need *any* codec-specific plugins at all. The browser should simply use the existing mechanisms in the operating system or desktop environment for performing video decoding. On Windows that means DirectShow, and on Linux that means gstreamer. Codec installation is then a task for the operating system or package manager. The result is a better experience for the user, and a simpler implementation for the developers, as they need only to interface to a generic video backend, rather than incorporating a completely codec stack into the browser.
'course, this kind of reasonable design decision would get in the way of pointless political posturing, and who really wants that?
Ah, I see, so you believe that your little hacky solution should be good enough for people who want a functioning video element. Well, it's not. Some people like a fully functional, standards compliant browser. Shocking, I know.
Maybe I should pull a Godwin on you: joining the German Resistance was obviously idiotic, right?
ROFL, yes, software patents == Nazi's, and Firefox == the German Resistance.
Congrats, that's an excellent sense of proportion you have there.
Would you now please let "the rest of us" make our own choices too?
But that's the whole point. You aren't given one. Firefox has decided what your choice is, and if you don't like it, you have to migrate to a different browser. Really, the hubris is pretty astonishing, as they honestly seem to feel they can force their ideals down their users throats, despite it being a futile effort, and that it'll somehow make a difference. It'd be hilarious if it weren't so dumb.
As an aside, though, I do hope someone forks Firefox and we can move on. Just as XFree86 was finally pushed aside for being too idealogical and slow to move, so too might Mozilla.
I hope you do realise you sound like a desperate guy ditched by his girlfriend
No, what I sound like is a guy who is baffled by the irrational behaviour of the leaders of a project that, for years, he's supported and enjoyed.
But yeah, you're right, better to just write off any legitimate arguments than to respond intelligently.
ROFL, wait, so you're defending Firefox's idiotic stance while, simultaneously, actively attempting to work around it? Hypocritical much?
As far as non-Windows users are concerned, the most painful problem is Flash being crap for video playback, and the fix for that is one add-on or greasemonkey script away.
That's not a fix. That's a hack to work around the Firefox devs. But if you're happy with a degraded browsing experience because Mozilla can't get their heads out of their collective ideological asses, that's your choice. The rest of us will just move on and find a project that gives users the option to make their own choices, as opposed to dictating to them from on high.
No, garbage is saying the war is over
What war? You really think Firefox choosing to hobble their browser is gonna somehow change the software patent landscape? Please, get real. The users will move on, baffled by Firefox's stance, and Mozilla will achieve nothing while damaging their own reputation in the process.
Slashdot Mirror
Google is a for-profit corporation. Its whole reason to exist is to be greedy.
No, it's reason to exist is outlined in it's corporate charter. I'm sure "making money" is in there, but many (most?) charters also include a component that involves advancing the "public good" (which is why a lot of organizations donate to charities).
But, you know, don't let me get in the way of your blind corporation-bashing.
Google didn't come to this decision because they found their moral compass all of a sudden--otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to play censor for the government in the first place.
Alternatively, like any individual or group, they may have felt, at the time, that they could do some good by operating in China, and then realized, in retrospect, that that simply wasn't the case.
But you're right. It makes way more sense to ascribe sinister, greedy motivations to them. No company can possibly make a mistake...
The argument is that the true savings would be much greater.
Ah, I see, so the republicans feel tort reform is a magical silver bullet because, well, they say so, even though there's no numbers to prove it, but makes sense in your gut, right?
Okay, well, I suppose that's one way to run a country (who needs the CBO, anyway)...
How would you even reliably measure such a thing?
You don't. You try it in a state and see how much insurance costs go down (kinda like how Obama wants to start pilot projects for various types of reform, to see how it goes). Luckily, Texas did just that in 2003! And, drum roll please...
Citation (the article itself contains citations for those claims, so really, it's a citation-by-proxy).
So, there you go, cold hard facts from a state that experimented with tort reform. But I'm sure you can find a reason to dismiss those results.
I'm actually a fan of having lots of smaller reforms.
Yeah, the only downside to this is that the Republicans would fight tooth-and-nail on every single bill, and we'd be old and gray by the time real reform was passed. The all-or-nothing approach the dems are taking has it's problems, but it gets a lot of reform done *now*, as opposed to dicking around with hundreds of separate bills.
Everybody likes to demonize one entity or another, but from what I can see there are a lot of things that each boost cost, often in a synergistic manner, but there are no silver bullets in this puzzle.
Totally agreed. But you wouldn't know that listening to a Republican go on and on about "tort reform" and "defensive medicine".
As I have pointed out [codemonkeyramblings.com], IT is as wasteful, if not more so, than the health care system.
Well, the minute IT is responsible for routinely bankrupting people because of conditions that are completely outside their realm of control, let me know. And the minute IT is responsible for truly astonishing levels of drag on the economy, placing a massive burden on the small businesses which are the engine of the American economy, well maybe then you might have a point. And when IT, like healthcare, becomes a service that everyone will, at some point in their lives, be forced to personally avail themselves, well, then your little metaphor might be worth considering.
Until then, I think it's safe to say that healthcare and IT are such drastically different industries that to compare the two is the height of idiocy.
But instead of just posting a negative comment about our health care situation, how about helping us understand how health care works in your country.
Yes, but see, then you'll get a lot of comments from people in nations with universal healthcare who basically say: "It's not perfect, but it ain't bad, and I won't go bankrupt if I get a catastrophic illness."
Then the people who like the idea of healthcare reform will say "See, I told you! Government-run healthcare is good! It can so work!". And the people who are afraid of it will say "Yeah, but the US system is the best in the world! And yours sucks because of <insert few extreme examples>. Oh, and you're a communist, anyway, and you just don't understand how awesome American and Freedom are!"
In short, it's basically pointless. The American government is, in my mind, just a microcosm of the beliefs of the American people, who are so deeply polarized on this issue that there will *never* be any agreement, as there's simply no middle ground that can be had, and certainly no swaying people who, quite honestly, probably made up their minds before Obama was ever elected.
As opposed to mandating citizens purchase car insurance?
I will also be concerned what else "they" might force down my throat.
So, how does it feel being a republican mouthpiece? Is it fun parroting lines straight from Fox News? OTOH, at least you don't have to think for yourself...
I don't understand how someone could say that tort reform is a red herring.
Probably because every actual *expert* (ie, not random slashbot) who has examined the issue has concluded that the savings are there, are real, and are pretty small relative to annual healthcare cost increases.
IOW, while tort reform is a good idea, and really should be done at some point, it most certainly is *not* the silver bullet that the republicans would have people believe, and leaving it out is a relatively minor issue given the size of the problem.
Hell, really, you should be happy tort reform isn't being addressed in this bill. The right has been bitching and complaining that the bill is simply too big! But now you want to make it bigger by adding tort reform to the mix? Why not just do that in a separate bill? It's not like it wouldn't get bipartisan support.
From your link, silicosis occurs due to particles less than 10 micrometers wide. Regolith is typically more than 30 micrometers wide.
And yet:
Furthermore:
Citation.
Sure. And for all the parts of the Moon that pose an exposure risk to the moondust-o-death, if you're standing there unprotected from this evil powder, you have a far more immediate health risk to deal with.
Exactly! It's kinda like how, if I had a vacuum sealed house, I'd never ever get dust inside! Right?
I think that humans won't have too much trouble with it as far as inhaling goes - it'll get trapped in mucus as well as all the other dust we inhale.
Funny, you'd think the same thing about airborne silicon, and yet you'd be wrong:
Concrete dust has many of the properties of lunar dust.
Well, except for the whole razor-sharp-jaggies-that-never-get-worn-down-by-weather property. And the, the-whole-moon-is-covered-with-that-crap property. But yeah, other than that, it's exactly the same. oO
The reason "most people" don't care is because they haven't been bit by DRM yet.
Sure they have. Didn't you read about the recent PS3 debacle? But to the user, that wasn't a DRM failing. That was just a network/technological problem. And to most users, that's how *all* any potential DRM failings will look, because they simply aren't educated enough in the underlying technology to know what's really going on. So they'll chock it up as yet-another-technical-glitch, and then keep on playing. Because that's what people do.
Not to mention the follow-up upgrade issue. What if Firefox incorporates an old version of Theora? Suddenly I have to upgrade both the gstreamer codecs *and* Firefox? That's just flat out ridiculous.
My friend, stop trolling.
I'm not trolling. I'm making a point and choosing to couch it in dripping sarcasm. There's a difference.
Please stop with "cheap shots" about miniscule market size, it depends entirely on which market you are talking about.
Obviously we're talking about the desktop PC market, and specifically, the intersection between the desktop PC market and the gaming demographic. The other markets you cite are *completely* beside the point, and honestly, I'm not even sure why you brought them up given the context of this discussion.
I use Linux because it's good for stuff I need to do with a computer and the fact it's been here 20-odd years is enough of a testament to it as an OS.
So do I. I'm typing this on a Linux-equipped laptop right now. But I'm not a hardcore gamer (the last game I played was Half-Life 2: Episode Two, which was released, what, 3-4 years back? And happens to work well under Wine). Gamers don't use Linux. So game companies don't target Linux. How is this surprising?
So I don't think the idea of porting games to Linux is so preposterous.
Wait, so you admit that the desktop market for Linux is tiny. And in the same breath, argue that porting games to Linux isn't "so preposterous". No offense, but you're contradicting yourself.
The simple fact is that to port a game to Linux you'll probably have to:
1) Write a new rendering pipeline unless you had the foresight to target OpenGL from the beginning (most games target DirectX, and obviously that isn't available on Linux).
2) Write new code to interface to Linux sound and peripheral libraries.
3) Implement some kind of installer.
4) Educate your developer base, support, and QA on Linux.
5) Roll out a complete Linux testbed, and that includes playtesters, to ensure that the port works as advertised.
6) Find some way to support and maintain that port across myriad distributions, kernels, etc.
And you propose they do all that to nail, what, 0.5% of the desktop gaming market?
But no, clearly the reason they don't target Linux is because you claim they can't deploy functional DRM...
Incidentally, DRM and commercial control is one of the main reasons, I believe, that there are so few commercial games released for Linux.
Oooooh, so that's the reason! It has absolutely nothing to do with the rather miniscule market size, the substantial cost of maintaining the port to service that tiny market, the cost of supporting myriad distributions, kernels, etc, the effort involved building in-house expertise in the platform, both for developers and support, etc? It's just DRM that's the big stumbling block?
Well of course! Why didn't *I* think of that??
And if a lot more people completely boycots [sic] DRM-crippled software/games/music/movies...
And that's where your little plan fails. Why? *Most people don't care*.
Waiting before buying games has one big drawback: you're out of synch with the rest of the market.
Uhh... how is not being in "synch [sic] with the rest of the market" a drawback? If you ask me, insisting on buying the latest, greatest game the minute it comes out is for suckers and fanbois.
They don't mind how rewarding you find whatever they give you---in fact, they want you to be happy
No, what they want is for you to get your tasks finished and to not quit.
Fortunately, particularly in the US, job mobility is drastically limited by a number of factors: the current poor job market, high levels of household debt and low levels of savings (making long periods without steady income untenable), fear of losing healthcare coverage, etc. As such, employees don't want to quit in the face of mistreatment, nor do they want to get fired for not performing their jobs properly.
Consequently, employers are empowered to do the bare minimum to keep their employees around. That means crappy wages, really crappy holiday packages, no bonuses, no paid overtime, etc.
the GCSE Examination Boards phoned in and asked Mr. Balls what a "compound verb" is and he didn't know the answer - and we have people like this in control of our education system????
Uhuh. Dude, *I* couldn't tell you what a compound verb is, and as a general rule, I think my writing is at least decent. Just because you don't know the names of components of English grammar, doesn't mean you can't compose meaningful, well-written sentences. Furthermore, are you suddenly expecting the secretary of state for education to be an expert in all education topics? What if he didn't know what a partial derivative was? Or an ionic bond? Or the Newtonian equation for velocity? Would you suddenly decry educational standards in mathematics, chemistry, and physics, too?
My point is simply this: Every single generation in the history of humanity has been convinced that the next generation is somehow worse than theirs. Spelling is worse, grammar is worse, music is worse, youth crime is up, respect for elders is down, blah, blah, blah. But it's all bullshit. Studies have shown that kids today are *more* literate than their forebearers. Youth crime is down in many countries (Canada and the US in particular, I don't know about other nations). The list goes on.
So quit worrying. Seriously. The kids will be fine.
What happens when your operating system handles plugins for the user but reminds the user: "If you click Install, and you live in the United States, you are breaking the law." ? Ubuntu does exactly this for the gstreamer-plugins-ugly package.
Uh, good. That's *precisely* how this should be handled. The user should be warned of the issues with installing the codec, and then given the choice to continue. Eliminating this choice is completely antithetical to the very concept of free software.
Why do you need a package manager when browsers have been facilitating the easy installation of plugins, such as Flash, for years now?
Because the point is the browser shouldn't need *any* codec-specific plugins at all. The browser should simply use the existing mechanisms in the operating system or desktop environment for performing video decoding. On Windows that means DirectShow, and on Linux that means gstreamer. Codec installation is then a task for the operating system or package manager. The result is a better experience for the user, and a simpler implementation for the developers, as they need only to interface to a generic video backend, rather than incorporating a completely codec stack into the browser.
'course, this kind of reasonable design decision would get in the way of pointless political posturing, and who really wants that?
And no, I'm working around Flash
Ah, I see, so you believe that your little hacky solution should be good enough for people who want a functioning video element. Well, it's not. Some people like a fully functional, standards compliant browser. Shocking, I know.
Maybe I should pull a Godwin on you: joining the German Resistance was obviously idiotic, right?
ROFL, yes, software patents == Nazi's, and Firefox == the German Resistance.
Congrats, that's an excellent sense of proportion you have there.
Would you now please let "the rest of us" make our own choices too?
But that's the whole point. You aren't given one. Firefox has decided what your choice is, and if you don't like it, you have to migrate to a different browser. Really, the hubris is pretty astonishing, as they honestly seem to feel they can force their ideals down their users throats, despite it being a futile effort, and that it'll somehow make a difference. It'd be hilarious if it weren't so dumb.
As an aside, though, I do hope someone forks Firefox and we can move on. Just as XFree86 was finally pushed aside for being too idealogical and slow to move, so too might Mozilla.
I hope you do realise you sound like a desperate guy ditched by his girlfriend
No, what I sound like is a guy who is baffled by the irrational behaviour of the leaders of a project that, for years, he's supported and enjoyed.
But yeah, you're right, better to just write off any legitimate arguments than to respond intelligently.
Guess what, I'm using it.
ROFL, wait, so you're defending Firefox's idiotic stance while, simultaneously, actively attempting to work around it? Hypocritical much?
As far as non-Windows users are concerned, the most painful problem is Flash being crap for video playback, and the fix for that is one add-on or greasemonkey script away.
That's not a fix. That's a hack to work around the Firefox devs. But if you're happy with a degraded browsing experience because Mozilla can't get their heads out of their collective ideological asses, that's your choice. The rest of us will just move on and find a project that gives users the option to make their own choices, as opposed to dictating to them from on high.
No, garbage is saying the war is over
What war? You really think Firefox choosing to hobble their browser is gonna somehow change the software patent landscape? Please, get real. The users will move on, baffled by Firefox's stance, and Mozilla will achieve nothing while damaging their own reputation in the process.