I may not be a very old Slashdot user as you can tell from my ID, but from what I can tell, since I joined the "updates" to this site have been disgusting. I'm not even going to comment about the lack of proper Unicode support, or the semi-broken moderation system, or the misuse of the "report as inappropriate". I'm not going to comment for the use of JavaScript and AJAX where it's not needed, either - these are subjects that have been discussed a lot over since a lot of time ago, and in my opinion it has been given a lot of time to fix them already.
Now about Slashdot TV - what a joke (I really though it was an April Fool). Slashdot had its uniqueness because it used to focus on discussing things. If we want to discuss videos, there are already appropriate services for that - YouTube, etc. Slashdot used to be a place for discussing text, and that seems to be gone. It's an hassle to browse through comments on limited-resource devices (like old PDAs and even more recent Android devices and iDevices). And the mobile version of the website seems to be broken; support for the classic mode of Slashdot seems to be unsupported too, however, I don't use it, so I can't tell. Looks like you no longer want people to read and discuss, but instead, you want people to watch videos, while seeing a video ad every minute. So glad I use an ad-blocker combined with IP blacklisting. I didn't watch many videos in their entirety from Slashdot TV (couldn't keep wasting my time and seeing more ads), but many people say the videos are not very interesting, and I got to agree.
More and more stories look like advertisements - the "slashvertisements" everyone talks about. I complain not only about these "slashvertisements", but also about the scope of the stories, which seem to be more banal every day that passes by - I mean, not nerd-focused at all. Not to talk about the fact that when the stories get to the home page, they are no longer news 75% of the times.
TL;DR I feel Slashdot is turning on the back of its userbase. Slashdot's now a website that has bugs to be fixed for ages, and seems to desperately try to mimic Reddit/Endagadget/whatever and only cares about AJAX freshness and topics that bring only pageviews and flamebait discussions (i.e. "Apple"). And while it seems to exaggeratedly use JavaScript and "new web technologies" in one side, pretending to be very "nerdish", simultaneously launches a video-streaming website that uses a deprecated plug-in software for playing the videos, instead of using an open standard.
This is a website which supposedly has news for nerds, but is this a website run by real nerds?
I can't understand how every now and then I see those comparisons between Android, iPhone and Blackberry (and in some cases which don't apply here, also Windows Mobile devices or Windows Phones).
Of course Android hardware fails more than all the others. First, because the number of devices running Android is much higher than the number of any of the OS ran by the others, thus, the number of silly users is also much higher. Secondly, Android isn't developed for a specific device and delimited type of H/W parts. It runs on things from cheap chinaphones and chinatablets, to expensive HTCs, Samsungs, [your favorite expensive brand here], etc. The fact that Android runs on cheap hardware increases greatly the number of silly people using it, at least IMHO. The fact that Android is open source makes it be that there are a lot of people hacking it: rooting, custom ROMs, dangerous APKs, etc.
While: iOS only runs on certain Apple devices, and nothing more. (iOS is also a walled garden, but that's another topic) This fact does have its advantages for the maker (Apple), for the vendor (if people want iOS they must buy an expensive iDevice), and for the"average consumer" (specific support for the OS of their device, since their device is the only one running that OS). You can hack iOS (jailbreak), but I'm guessing these jailbroken devices won't enter the statistics, since AFAIK Apple will refuse to repair them under warranty.
About BlackBerry phones and their OS, we can say basically the same as for Apple: the OS is made for the H/W they run, the H/W they run is made for the OS. There isn't any non-BlackBerry device running the BlackBerry OS (there wouldn't be any point in that, anyways).
Windows Mobile runs (or ran) on a wide variety of hardware, but it wasn't open source and nowhere as hackable as Android. Plus, it never had much market share in the new era of smartphones (the post-iPhone era), and there have never been so many dumbasses using it as Android has. The best you can do when it comes to custom WM ROMs is adding/removing apps and upgrade the S/W to a more recent version, but you can't really change the core of the OS. Plus, you can't (read: it's very hard/takes a lot of effort) port WM to a entirely new device yourself. Alternatively, you can port Android to a WM device. On this field, I talk by experience, I own a Windows Mobile device.
Windows Phone is run on a more select hardware, it still has a very small market share when compared to iOS or Android, and it's as closed (or even more closed than) iOS. I don't think there are many "average consumers" using Windows Phone, but when/if they come, I think the platform is walled enough for they not to do shit with their H/W or S/W. Microsoft can regulate who manufactures Windows Phones, where Google can't control who manufactures Android devices because of the license under which Android is released (the most they can control is what can access the Android Market and the like). Furthermore, Windows Phones must obey certain guidelines (e.g. three buttons at the bottom: back, WinKey and search, plus dedicated camera button) where Android devices do not: they won't be officially recognized by Google, but they still run Android.
I think this explains why H/W running Android "fails more", and also why there are so many devices running outdated versions of Android: some of them aren't capable of (in the same way that old iPhones don't run recent versions of iOS), for some of them the maker just stopped caring, if they even cared at any time. Plus, Android upgrades for a device are usually not as advertised as iOS upgrades: some customers simply choose not to care about upgrading (and some care, and prefer to stay with versions that work for them), some don't even know what Android is, talk to them about a software update. It's not like you connect your device to iTunes and it asks you to update; in many Android phones, specially cheapo ones, you have to do research yourself on which updates are available and on how to updat
"an open Wifi network"? Why does it need to be open? Even if they don't have the knowledge to develop their own wifi password discovering software, from scratch, without development software (except perhaps MS Office VBA), in a non-networked computer, prisoners get a lot of time to do manual brute force attacks. On WEP networks (who should use that, anyway), it's easy, since the number and type of characters is already known. On WPA, well... it would take ages, something most prisoners have plenty of.
The only problems I've seen in their website while the Slashdot effect keeps going, were Database connection errors on the forum, and that's solved after one or two reloads of the page (still, not nice when you are posting something on the forum and you loose it all). I guess the problem here is more related to the memory-hungry SQL database engine, than to the [virtual] hardware the website is running on. In fact, I have had several servers, some virtual and some not (old computers), with only 128MB of RAM - the same as on the provisional specs of a Raspberry Pi Model A. Everything works well with nginx and PHP5, until you add SQL. When that happens and you get a lot of visitors... out of memory!
From another point of view, Mozilla might also be pointing McAfee as the culpirit to hide Firefox problems versus other mainstream browsers (Chrome, IE, Opera, Safari). In the specific case of Chrome, it might use a lot of memory, but at least when a tab or plugin crashes it doesn't crash the whole browser (so probably a McAfee plugin for Chrome would not cause whole browser problems).
(I'm a happy Chrome&Chromium Linux user; there's Adblock and hosts file for my safebrowsing needs, and ClamAV for my AV needs, if any)
I know that the latest Firefox versions (5, 6, 7b) are known for being RAM-hungry and crashing a lot, but honestly, this time I believe Mozilla is correct. As Joe_Dragon said, go all the way and uninstall McAffee completely. I used McAffee on Windows for some time because I was forced to, and in my opinion even Microsoft's Security Essentials performs much better. McAffee crashes, removes system files, and when the real threat comes, it doesn't detect it (and when detects, doesn't block it).
It's no surprise that the McAffee Firefox plugin causes FF crashes, since the McAffee "antivirus" caused Windows crashes.
The problem: there was no logic train - It's illogical (like most things in Facebook IMHO).
As I said on the first comment of this story, one possible logical explanation is that now that FB tracking's not a "secret" (w/ quotes), they admit and patent it!
...and now that's not a "secret" anymore, tries to patent it.
Google could run for the patent too. At the end, they're basically the same, and I think Google actually collects more data than Facebook (much more people doing Google searches than those having a Facebook account).
This would work so well, that a friend of mine would get identified as being 10 years old although she's 22, and another friend would get identified as being 20 although he's only 12. And yes, I'm aware that according to that patent, a device would not only measure height but many other things. Still, I think it would work as "well" as facial recognition on Windows login - sometimes it does recognize your face, sometimes it doesn't but instead recognizes a picture of you.
...that WebOS has received more press attention and discussions after it was declared dead by HP than when it was launched a month and a half ago? At least this is my perception.
I never put my hands on a WebOS device, not even on a old Palm device, but I must say the hardware of the HP Touchpad looks nice and for $99 it's worth at least for acting as an expensive candle. Note that WebOS is now a dead OS (did it ever get alive?), but that doesn't mean it stops working from one day to another. Not everyone needs constant OS updates, if all they want is checking their email, calendar and reading the news while sitting on their sofa. This kind of people don't need active developers and 1 million apps in an "app store" either, and I think these people will find the Touchpad interesting for being a well-known branded product, while having a liquidation price. A tablet (nor a phone, nor a media player) doesn't need constant upgrades in their firmware to work, assuming the current one is stable enough. And the lack of "official" developers on the platform can be easily surpassed by homebrew developers - I repeat, the HP Touchpad is now at $99 (it might even go lower, who knows), and Android might be put into it, so if I could I would grab a Touchpad just now to make hacking fun of it.
I think that MS is either desperate on getting developers to develop for WP7, and they are so desperate that even the very small niche of WebOS developers looks important to them, or else, that Brandon-Watson-speaking-for-Microsoft didn't think twice (perhaps not even once) before tweeting about that offer...
And even if one thinks that a touch screen for ordering sandwiches and drinks is something too far from an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, I got some other very valid examples.
Right now I have sitting on my desk an old iPaq (from Compaq / later HP) from 2002, with a touch screen. This iPaq (originally) ran Windows Mobile 2002/later upgraded to 2003 (so, if one thinks Apple invented the pocket gadget OS, one's completely wrong). It had WiFi and Bluetooth connections; it syncs with Windows through ActiveSync (Microsoft's sync well before there was iTunes sync). I could use this HP device as a portable media player just like the iPod Touch. And one can argue, "but these old iPaq don't act as phone!" - true, but e.g. there's the HTC Blueangel released in 2004 that has phone and GPRS internet access along with WiFi, has a VGA camera, touch screen and runs WM 2003.
The HTC Universal was released in 2005, does phone, comes with GPRS and 3G internet access, wifi and a touchscreen, running WM 5 (sure, this one looks very different from an iPhone). Had a 1.3 Megapixel camera plus a half-VGA video camera on the screen half - yes, two cameras back in 2005, and it did video calls! Video calls over the phone network, no shitty FaceTime (or FacePalm) that only worked over wifi.
I could spend all day writing this post enumerating more devices that came well before the Apple's products on the area, although having the same or better features than the first iPhone. I think Microsoft just didn't sue Apple more on the area of mobile OS because iOS never looked like WM (however, at the time of the first iPhone, WM had many more features than iOS). However, as Android came after iOS, and as it has a somewhat iOS-like UI (specially with Samsung-specific mods), it is target for more objection than the old WM - even because Android surpasses iOS, WM has died (at least on what depends from MS), and Windows Phone is still in its first steps and honestly it sucks hard IMO.
The roles are inverted. It should have been HP, HTC, all those that developed smartphones well before the iPhone, suing Apple over its 'smartphone with great looks', instead of having Apple suing manufacturers of current smartphones, that by the way must look like an iPhone because otherwise they don't succeed in the market.
Just to finish with my most-likely-negative-scored post, I'm no MS, Apple or Google fanboy; as you can see, I always used WM more than Android (although I wish I had an Android device, looking forward to buy one - or hack something - soon). And yes, I have put my hands on both old and more recent Apple devices lots of times (and lots of times hated their OS for valid reasons). I do, however, disagree with pretty much anything Apple does because of this: they not only reinvent what has been invented and give it a shiny Apple look, but also call that "new" thing their invention and sue everyone that does something similar.
Smartphones existed well before iPhone. Tablet PCs existed well before iPad; now the "PC" part was dropped and Tablet PCs are just called Tablets and come with a less powerful, but more newbie and finger suited OS. Portable digital audio players existed before iPod, this is however the only part I give Apple little credit because the players that existed before had a much bigger form factor than first iPods. And, iPod doesn't necessarily mean iPod Touch.
PS: and although I forgot about Palm and PalmOS, and probably an handful of other platforms, I'm with them.
The result of that is getting old Firefox users unsatisfied because they miss the old Firefox feeling (which was the reason they didn't use Chrome/IE/Opera/anything else), Chrome calling Firefox to be a copycat, more Firefox users switching to Chrome because at least it is original work, and little to no Chrome users switching to Firefox because it's just a badass copy of Chrome. Conclusion: Firefox looses, Chrome wins. And remember, Chrome has the big advantage of being advertised by Google on its search homepage and soon probably (if not already, I don't know because I don't use Google+) on Google+ too.
they = web browser developers "My browser to look like every other application on my computer." - they think a browser is a special application with special privileges just because hey, it lets you browse the web! "A URL bar where you enter.. a URL" - they started calling it "navigation bar" long ago. You aren't supposed to input URLs there anymore, even because the "average user" searches Google for "facebook" instead of typing facebook.com in the navigation bar. "An area where the website is displayed" - I wonder how much time is left until they find a way to drastically change this and announce it as the latest big hit in web browser news. (that time, I'm sure I get back to kernel 2.6 with Firefox 3.6 and Gnome 2).
"Extra features are nice" but they managed to almost give them an higher priority than the web pages you're browsing.
I know. One example of this are the cheap Chinese MP3 players, known as S1 Mp3, some of which don't say anything but support OGG. I also have a multimedia box with DTV tuner and recorder which doesn't say anything about OGG, but supports it (at the end, it runs on Linux).
And there're many, many other devices and even softwares supporting OGG natively, without announcing it - mostly because most people don't know what OGG is and in what ways it is better (or worse, according to each one's opinion) than MP3 and MP4 with H.264.
[ This article does not cite any references or sources ] [ Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed (January 2011) ]
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Wikipedia is 10 years old [citation needed]. 10 years helping students to do copy&paste thinking they would get good marks at school [1]. 10 years of Creative Commons content [citation needed].
So, happy [citation needed] birthday Wikipedia!
References ____________ [1] Common sense. At least in Portugal.
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No, they haven't, at least not for Linux, and there's a significant number of people already using it.
In these browser wars discussions, people tend to forget that many browsers run on various platforms (not the case with IE, of course) and the plugins&codecs available differ from platform to platform. It's the case with WMP for Firefox, Chrome or Opera: it only exists on Windows, for obvious reasons.
...But few things support it (when compared to MPEG and H.264), and most people don't know what it is. If it weren't this way, you would have people calling "OGG Players" to Digital Audio Players instead of "MP3 players"! I dream with that day when people do that...
For the links: use "a href=" blah blah blah as you would do in a plain XHTML webpage. For me it always worked well. If you can't take it, then I suppose this thing of having to write in HTML is to keep noobs away and filter the geeks:)
I don't think Microsoft will stop its busy work making banners saying the blue E version 9 is the best and better than the 2nd best as well as irritating Silverlight (with H.264 video included!) ads for the same purpose, to release a plugin for a browser that no one uses. Even because, in Europe everyone is using the orange fox (around the blue globe!) and they need to get everyone back to the blue E before people start using the multicolored ball (with a blue center!).
This, my dear people, is human evolution along the times...
That would be easy, as the browser is theirs. And yes it wouldn't be a pacific action, but they can always block the plugin from running in their browser - at least, by allowing plugins only to be installed through a "something-store" (something so chic today, isn't it? Even Ubuntu has a Software Store!), and by not allowing that plugin to be distributed through that "store" - turning these browsers into small Apple-philosophy devices locked in a walled garden (and no, Chrome isn't in a walled garden, because you can install extensions through the "developer mode/menu")
Most people are probably going to be happy using browsers that have both codecs
I would say that "most people" won't even notice there's a change in the codecs; what they might think is something like "another plugin to install? Geez! Well it'll have to be, I want to watch this YouTube so badly..." and then click "Install".
Slashdot Mirror
I may not be a very old Slashdot user as you can tell from my ID, but from what I can tell, since I joined the "updates" to this site have been disgusting. I'm not even going to comment about the lack of proper Unicode support, or the semi-broken moderation system, or the misuse of the "report as inappropriate". I'm not going to comment for the use of JavaScript and AJAX where it's not needed, either - these are subjects that have been discussed a lot over since a lot of time ago, and in my opinion it has been given a lot of time to fix them already.
Now about Slashdot TV - what a joke (I really though it was an April Fool). Slashdot had its uniqueness because it used to focus on discussing things. If we want to discuss videos, there are already appropriate services for that - YouTube, etc. Slashdot used to be a place for discussing text, and that seems to be gone. It's an hassle to browse through comments on limited-resource devices (like old PDAs and even more recent Android devices and iDevices). And the mobile version of the website seems to be broken; support for the classic mode of Slashdot seems to be unsupported too, however, I don't use it, so I can't tell. Looks like you no longer want people to read and discuss, but instead, you want people to watch videos, while seeing a video ad every minute. So glad I use an ad-blocker combined with IP blacklisting.
I didn't watch many videos in their entirety from Slashdot TV (couldn't keep wasting my time and seeing more ads), but many people say the videos are not very interesting, and I got to agree.
More and more stories look like advertisements - the "slashvertisements" everyone talks about. I complain not only about these "slashvertisements", but also about the scope of the stories, which seem to be more banal every day that passes by - I mean, not nerd-focused at all. Not to talk about the fact that when the stories get to the home page, they are no longer news 75% of the times.
TL;DR
I feel Slashdot is turning on the back of its userbase. Slashdot's now a website that has bugs to be fixed for ages, and seems to desperately try to mimic Reddit/Endagadget/whatever and only cares about AJAX freshness and topics that bring only pageviews and flamebait discussions (i.e. "Apple"). And while it seems to exaggeratedly use JavaScript and "new web technologies" in one side, pretending to be very "nerdish", simultaneously launches a video-streaming website that uses a deprecated plug-in software for playing the videos, instead of using an open standard.
This is a website which supposedly has news for nerds, but is this a website run by real nerds?
I can't understand how every now and then I see those comparisons between Android, iPhone and Blackberry (and in some cases which don't apply here, also Windows Mobile devices or Windows Phones).
Of course Android hardware fails more than all the others. First, because the number of devices running Android is much higher than the number of any of the OS ran by the others, thus, the number of silly users is also much higher.
Secondly, Android isn't developed for a specific device and delimited type of H/W parts. It runs on things from cheap chinaphones and chinatablets, to expensive HTCs, Samsungs, [your favorite expensive brand here], etc.
The fact that Android runs on cheap hardware increases greatly the number of silly people using it, at least IMHO.
The fact that Android is open source makes it be that there are a lot of people hacking it: rooting, custom ROMs, dangerous APKs, etc.
While:
iOS only runs on certain Apple devices, and nothing more. (iOS is also a walled garden, but that's another topic) This fact does have its advantages for the maker (Apple), for the vendor (if people want iOS they must buy an expensive iDevice), and for the"average consumer" (specific support for the OS of their device, since their device is the only one running that OS).
You can hack iOS (jailbreak), but I'm guessing these jailbroken devices won't enter the statistics, since AFAIK Apple will refuse to repair them under warranty.
About BlackBerry phones and their OS, we can say basically the same as for Apple: the OS is made for the H/W they run, the H/W they run is made for the OS. There isn't any non-BlackBerry device running the BlackBerry OS (there wouldn't be any point in that, anyways).
Windows Mobile runs (or ran) on a wide variety of hardware, but it wasn't open source and nowhere as hackable as Android. Plus, it never had much market share in the new era of smartphones (the post-iPhone era), and there have never been so many dumbasses using it as Android has. The best you can do when it comes to custom WM ROMs is adding/removing apps and upgrade the S/W to a more recent version, but you can't really change the core of the OS. Plus, you can't (read: it's very hard/takes a lot of effort) port WM to a entirely new device yourself. Alternatively, you can port Android to a WM device. On this field, I talk by experience, I own a Windows Mobile device.
Windows Phone is run on a more select hardware, it still has a very small market share when compared to iOS or Android, and it's as closed (or even more closed than) iOS. I don't think there are many "average consumers" using Windows Phone, but when/if they come, I think the platform is walled enough for they not to do shit with their H/W or S/W. Microsoft can regulate who manufactures Windows Phones, where Google can't control who manufactures Android devices because of the license under which Android is released (the most they can control is what can access the Android Market and the like). Furthermore, Windows Phones must obey certain guidelines (e.g. three buttons at the bottom: back, WinKey and search, plus dedicated camera button) where Android devices do not: they won't be officially recognized by Google, but they still run Android.
I think this explains why H/W running Android "fails more", and also why there are so many devices running outdated versions of Android: some of them aren't capable of (in the same way that old iPhones don't run recent versions of iOS), for some of them the maker just stopped caring, if they even cared at any time. Plus, Android upgrades for a device are usually not as advertised as iOS upgrades: some customers simply choose not to care about upgrading (and some care, and prefer to stay with versions that work for them), some don't even know what Android is, talk to them about a software update. It's not like you connect your device to iTunes and it asks you to update; in many Android phones, specially cheapo ones, you have to do research yourself on which updates are available and on how to updat
"an open Wifi network"?
Why does it need to be open?
Even if they don't have the knowledge to develop their own wifi password discovering software, from scratch, without development software (except perhaps MS Office VBA), in a non-networked computer, prisoners get a lot of time to do manual brute force attacks. On WEP networks (who should use that, anyway), it's easy, since the number and type of characters is already known. On WPA, well... it would take ages, something most prisoners have plenty of.
And epoxy the ethernet port on the Model B, and make sure nobody's bringing WLAN or 3G USB adapters into jail.
The only problems I've seen in their website while the Slashdot effect keeps going, were Database connection errors on the forum, and that's solved after one or two reloads of the page (still, not nice when you are posting something on the forum and you loose it all).
I guess the problem here is more related to the memory-hungry SQL database engine, than to the [virtual] hardware the website is running on. In fact, I have had several servers, some virtual and some not (old computers), with only 128MB of RAM - the same as on the provisional specs of a Raspberry Pi Model A. Everything works well with nginx and PHP5, until you add SQL. When that happens and you get a lot of visitors... out of memory!
True, it doesn't. McAfee just helps a lot.
From another point of view, Mozilla might also be pointing McAfee as the culpirit to hide Firefox problems versus other mainstream browsers (Chrome, IE, Opera, Safari). In the specific case of Chrome, it might use a lot of memory, but at least when a tab or plugin crashes it doesn't crash the whole browser (so probably a McAfee plugin for Chrome would not cause whole browser problems).
(I'm a happy Chrome&Chromium Linux user; there's Adblock and hosts file for my safebrowsing needs, and ClamAV for my AV needs, if any)
I know that the latest Firefox versions (5, 6, 7b) are known for being RAM-hungry and crashing a lot, but honestly, this time I believe Mozilla is correct. As Joe_Dragon said, go all the way and uninstall McAffee completely. I used McAffee on Windows for some time because I was forced to, and in my opinion even Microsoft's Security Essentials performs much better. McAffee crashes, removes system files, and when the real threat comes, it doesn't detect it (and when detects, doesn't block it).
It's no surprise that the McAffee Firefox plugin causes FF crashes, since the McAffee "antivirus" caused Windows crashes.
The problem: there was no logic train - It's illogical (like most things in Facebook IMHO).
As I said on the first comment of this story, one possible logical explanation is that now that FB tracking's not a "secret" (w/ quotes), they admit and patent it!
...and now that's not a "secret" anymore, tries to patent it.
Google could run for the patent too. At the end, they're basically the same, and I think Google actually collects more data than Facebook (much more people doing Google searches than those having a Facebook account).
This would work so well, that a friend of mine would get identified as being 10 years old although she's 22, and another friend would get identified as being 20 although he's only 12. And yes, I'm aware that according to that patent, a device would not only measure height but many other things. Still, I think it would work as "well" as facial recognition on Windows login - sometimes it does recognize your face, sometimes it doesn't but instead recognizes a picture of you.
Just a quick correction, GNOME is not an OS, it's a desktop environment.
...that WebOS has received more press attention and discussions after it was declared dead by HP than when it was launched a month and a half ago? At least this is my perception.
I never put my hands on a WebOS device, not even on a old Palm device, but I must say the hardware of the HP Touchpad looks nice and for $99 it's worth at least for acting as an expensive candle. Note that WebOS is now a dead OS (did it ever get alive?), but that doesn't mean it stops working from one day to another. Not everyone needs constant OS updates, if all they want is checking their email, calendar and reading the news while sitting on their sofa. This kind of people don't need active developers and 1 million apps in an "app store" either, and I think these people will find the Touchpad interesting for being a well-known branded product, while having a liquidation price.
A tablet (nor a phone, nor a media player) doesn't need constant upgrades in their firmware to work, assuming the current one is stable enough. And the lack of "official" developers on the platform can be easily surpassed by homebrew developers - I repeat, the HP Touchpad is now at $99 (it might even go lower, who knows), and Android might be put into it, so if I could I would grab a Touchpad just now to make hacking fun of it.
I think that MS is either desperate on getting developers to develop for WP7, and they are so desperate that even the very small niche of WebOS developers looks important to them, or else, that Brandon-Watson-speaking-for-Microsoft didn't think twice (perhaps not even once) before tweeting about that offer...
It seems the word "sometimes" accidentally slipped in.
I'm OK with Firefox 3.6. But you're right when it comes to kernel and DE.
And even if one thinks that a touch screen for ordering sandwiches and drinks is something too far from an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, I got some other very valid examples.
Right now I have sitting on my desk an old iPaq (from Compaq / later HP) from 2002, with a touch screen. This iPaq (originally) ran Windows Mobile 2002/later upgraded to 2003 (so, if one thinks Apple invented the pocket gadget OS, one's completely wrong). It had WiFi and Bluetooth connections; it syncs with Windows through ActiveSync (Microsoft's sync well before there was iTunes sync). I could use this HP device as a portable media player just like the iPod Touch. And one can argue, "but these old iPaq don't act as phone!" - true, but e.g. there's the HTC Blueangel released in 2004 that has phone and GPRS internet access along with WiFi, has a VGA camera, touch screen and runs WM 2003.
The HTC Universal was released in 2005, does phone, comes with GPRS and 3G internet access, wifi and a touchscreen, running WM 5 (sure, this one looks very different from an iPhone). Had a 1.3 Megapixel camera plus a half-VGA video camera on the screen half - yes, two cameras back in 2005, and it did video calls! Video calls over the phone network, no shitty FaceTime (or FacePalm) that only worked over wifi.
I could spend all day writing this post enumerating more devices that came well before the Apple's products on the area, although having the same or better features than the first iPhone. I think Microsoft just didn't sue Apple more on the area of mobile OS because iOS never looked like WM (however, at the time of the first iPhone, WM had many more features than iOS).
However, as Android came after iOS, and as it has a somewhat iOS-like UI (specially with Samsung-specific mods), it is target for more objection than the old WM - even because Android surpasses iOS, WM has died (at least on what depends from MS), and Windows Phone is still in its first steps and honestly it sucks hard IMO.
The roles are inverted. It should have been HP, HTC, all those that developed smartphones well before the iPhone, suing Apple over its 'smartphone with great looks', instead of having Apple suing manufacturers of current smartphones, that by the way must look like an iPhone because otherwise they don't succeed in the market.
Just to finish with my most-likely-negative-scored post, I'm no MS, Apple or Google fanboy; as you can see, I always used WM more than Android (although I wish I had an Android device, looking forward to buy one - or hack something - soon). And yes, I have put my hands on both old and more recent Apple devices lots of times (and lots of times hated their OS for valid reasons). I do, however, disagree with pretty much anything Apple does because of this: they not only reinvent what has been invented and give it a shiny Apple look, but also call that "new" thing their invention and sue everyone that does something similar.
Smartphones existed well before iPhone.
Tablet PCs existed well before iPad; now the "PC" part was dropped and Tablet PCs are just called Tablets and come with a less powerful, but more newbie and finger suited OS.
Portable digital audio players existed before iPod, this is however the only part I give Apple little credit because the players that existed before had a much bigger form factor than first iPods. And, iPod doesn't necessarily mean iPod Touch.
PS: and although I forgot about Palm and PalmOS, and probably an handful of other platforms, I'm with them.
The result of that is getting old Firefox users unsatisfied because they miss the old Firefox feeling (which was the reason they didn't use Chrome/IE/Opera/anything else), Chrome calling Firefox to be a copycat, more Firefox users switching to Chrome because at least it is original work, and little to no Chrome users switching to Firefox because it's just a badass copy of Chrome.
Conclusion: Firefox looses, Chrome wins. And remember, Chrome has the big advantage of being advertised by Google on its search homepage and soon probably (if not already, I don't know because I don't use Google+) on Google+ too.
they = web browser developers
"My browser to look like every other application on my computer." - they think a browser is a special application with special privileges just because hey, it lets you browse the web!
"A URL bar where you enter.. a URL" - they started calling it "navigation bar" long ago. You aren't supposed to input URLs there anymore, even because the "average user" searches Google for "facebook" instead of typing facebook.com in the navigation bar.
"An area where the website is displayed" - I wonder how much time is left until they find a way to drastically change this and announce it as the latest big hit in web browser news. (that time, I'm sure I get back to kernel 2.6 with Firefox 3.6 and Gnome 2).
"Extra features are nice" but they managed to almost give them an higher priority than the web pages you're browsing.
Sigh...
or is it just me and my stupid DNS service? I guess, it's the /. effect.
I know. One example of this are the cheap Chinese MP3 players, known as S1 Mp3, some of which don't say anything but support OGG. I also have a multimedia box with DTV tuner and recorder which doesn't say anything about OGG, but supports it (at the end, it runs on Linux).
And there're many, many other devices and even softwares supporting OGG natively, without announcing it - mostly because most people don't know what OGG is and in what ways it is better (or worse, according to each one's opinion) than MP3 and MP4 with H.264.
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Wikipedia is 10 years old [citation needed]. 10 years helping students to do copy&paste thinking they would get good marks at school [1]. 10 years of Creative Commons content [citation needed].
So, happy [citation needed] birthday Wikipedia!
References
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[1] Common sense. At least in Portugal.
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No, they haven't, at least not for Linux, and there's a significant number of people already using it.
In these browser wars discussions, people tend to forget that many browsers run on various platforms (not the case with IE, of course) and the plugins&codecs available differ from platform to platform. It's the case with WMP for Firefox, Chrome or Opera: it only exists on Windows, for obvious reasons.
OGG is free.
...But few things support it (when compared to MPEG and H.264), and most people don't know what it is. If it weren't this way, you would have people calling "OGG Players" to Digital Audio Players instead of "MP3 players"! I dream with that day when people do that...
For the links: use "a href=" blah blah blah as you would do in a plain XHTML webpage. For me it always worked well. If you can't take it, then I suppose this thing of having to write in HTML is to keep noobs away and filter the geeks :)
I don't think Microsoft will stop its busy work making banners saying the blue E version 9 is the best and better than the 2nd best as well as irritating Silverlight (with H.264 video included!) ads for the same purpose, to release a plugin for a browser that no one uses. Even because, in Europe everyone is using the orange fox (around the blue globe!) and they need to get everyone back to the blue E before people start using the multicolored ball (with a blue center!).
This, my dear people, is human evolution along the times...
That would be easy, as the browser is theirs. And yes it wouldn't be a pacific action, but they can always block the plugin from running in their browser - at least, by allowing plugins only to be installed through a "something-store" (something so chic today, isn't it? Even Ubuntu has a Software Store!), and by not allowing that plugin to be distributed through that "store" - turning these browsers into small Apple-philosophy devices locked in a walled garden (and no, Chrome isn't in a walled garden, because you can install extensions through the "developer mode/menu")
Most people are probably going to be happy using browsers that have both codecs
I would say that "most people" won't even notice there's a change in the codecs; what they might think is something like "another plugin to install? Geez! Well it'll have to be, I want to watch this YouTube so badly..." and then click "Install".