I know zero out of dozens of people that like the direction firefox is going in.
I know dozens out of dozens of people that like the direction firefox is going in. I've found the latest versions of Firefox to be faster with more capability than previous versions. It's why I use the new releases and not the old releases.
And I don't really trust an organization like Mozilla to be able to create something that meets the needs of most people. Their staunch opposition to H.264 is a prime example of this. H.264 is an non-negotiable requirement for me. If you won't support it, I can't use your product. Period.
Then the Web is not for you. It isn't some kind of Mozilla standard that Mozilla is worried about, it's Web standards. Most Web software developers disagree with the idea that closed, royalty bearing formats are an acceptable choice for the Web. Mozilla, as we know, disagrees with you. The W3C disagrees with you. Opera disagrees with you. Google disagrees with you. And Tim Berners-Lee, of course, disagrees with you.
WebM was not developed within an ISO recognized standards development organization. It never had a hope of being patent-free: the process was not open, not due-process, and for that reason and others the folks who might have been willing to donate their IP to the effort were not properly motivated.
Neither was Vorbis. Vorbis has been used in huge projects by huge companies for over a decade. Why has it remained royalty-free? Why doesn't VP8 similarly have "a hope" of remaining royalty-free? Until the MPEG LA or one of the companies that allegedly hold patents essential to VP8 have something substantive to show there is no proof that VP8 infringes any patents. All the MPEG LA is doing now is what they've always done since the launch of WebM: scaremongering.
The worst part for these individuals is that a lock-out of Google+ includes being locked out of all Google services, including email, calendar, and documents.
Which is why it's always important avoid concentrating your services in just one provider.
Mozilla has 1/10th the resources on this that Google does, and trying to go toe-to-toe with them on release speed will swiftly reduce Firefox to an unusable mess
I don't think it will. The transition from Firefox 4 to Firefox 5 happened easily enough. I read the future feature list the other day (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features) and the bigger features are targeted for Firefox 7, rather than trying to somehow rush to shove them into Firefox 6.
The rate of development hasn't changed, just the frequency of releases. All that means in practice is that features or improvements that are complete and ready to use are released sooner than if they had to wait for other unrelated features to be complete before there's a major release.
Mozilla should understand that the 90s are over and people are no longer buying a new computer every 2 years and upgrade their software even more often. The new features (ALL of them) are not needed in the default install. They could be tested using extensions but there is absolutely no reason any more to change ANYTHING just for change's sake.
Compared to Firefox 3.0, Firefox 5 has significant performance improvements in its JavaScript and render engines. You can't reasonably implement those changes as an add-on because it will be too slow. You really are missing out if you're still using Firefox 3.0. Firefox 5 is faster and more capable.
The problem, if you can call it that, is that the distro of choice for GNOME3 (Fedora 15) makes it a little hard to get going out of the box. It's not by any means insurmountable, but it's a little harder than it should be as some things are missing entirely (an Office suite really ought to come preinstalled) and playing "find the repo/RPM" is a lot harder than "It's probably already there, and if not it's trivial to find a PPA" of Ubuntu.
It might not have been there by default if you installed from one of the live CDs as opposed to the full DVD. I don't know what's included on the Fedora CD spins by default as I tend to use the full DVD versions or I use preupgrade to update an existing system in place.
Still, installing office applications is trivial and you don't need to play "find the repo/RPM". RPMs are organised into groups and the groups are easy to list with either on the command line with yum or with the several graphical package managers available (like yumex, gpk-application, etc). You should have an entry in your desktop environment's menu called "Add/Remove Software" by default (which will probably be gpk-application). Go to the Office group and pick the packages you want. Alternatively, you can just install by group on the command line with yum groupinstall Office. LibreOffice is part of the default group install for the Office group.
And why Firefox 4 fails utterly. They literally did remove the 'status bar'. Not an ability to hide it, it's gone.
At least one case where Google isn't forcing the change down on people...what a concept.
Install the Status-4-Evar add-on and your status bar is back. This is why Firefox 4 wins completely. It's extremely extensible. Alternatively, you can use Firefox 4's add-on bar to display status oriented add-ons and toolbar icons and buttons similarly to the old status bar. I use the add-on bar to display two extensions I happen to like (ShowIP and ServerSpy).
Looks like you either don't have Adobe Flash installed or are using an older version of Adobe Flash. To dish out revenge on the green pigs who stole the Birds' eggs you'll need to: Install Google Chrome, a fast browser from Google that comes with Flash built-in. or Install the latest version of Adobe Flash.
Pirates Love Daisies, on the other hand, is an example of a game that works well in modern browsers with no plugins.
Android barely qualifies as a form of "Linux." Yes, it uses a Linux kernel, but the fact is largely incidental - there's no real technical reason that Android couldn't be built on BSD or even WinCE if Google or an OEM wanted it. It isn't close to POSIX-compatible, it only runs "managed" (VM-based) apps, and it isn't even open-source as of 3.0.
So install MeeGo. MeeGo is quite strongly aligned with the upstream projects it makes use of. It really is a desktop Linux distribution for mobile devices.
I avoid the problem to begin with by not installing Flash in the first place. It all depends on your usage patterns, of course, but I find I no longer need Flash. Yes, some websites or specific features of some websites just don't work without Flash but for me these cases are increasingly in the minority.
Does the WebM Project require that I join the CCL to use WebM?
No. Xiph.org, Matroska and Google make the WebM technologies available under an open-source BSD license. The terms and conditions of that open-source license have not changed.
Heritage is distributing 685 iPads to students this school year, with plans to boost that figure to 730 by next school year. It is installing more than 100 educational apps on the iPads, and tying the devices to facility-wide Wi-Fi and Google-branded Internet services such as Gmail.
More consumers for Apple and Google I suppose. Would not the money spent on 685 iPads be more productively spent by hiring teachers, even if it were just one additional teacher? One good teacher can make a world of difference to child's education. A difference that I feel confident eclipses anything that either Apple or Google have to offer.
Is Xbox Live integration a good feature? Yes, if you already have it. If you're talking about my grandmother who has doesn't care for a "YBox" or "PlaySituation" or a "Whey", it's no good for her.
I imagine the intention is to use XBox Live as the backend for games on Windows Phone. So if your grandmother cares about Angry Birds she will perhaps end up caring about XBox Live as well.
It might happen. Nokia will be pushing Windows Phone hugely at the start of next year, so much so that I suspect they'll discount their initial models quite heavily. Windows Phone usage will no doubt grow, it will just be a question of by how much.
A command line is more flexible than a GUI could ever be. It just has a steeper learning curve. Since computers are more mainstream these days GUIs are more prevalent. That doesn't decrease the value of command lines though.
It depends on the task. A command line interface will never be as good as a GUI for image editing, for example. Ultimately, graphical user interfaces and command line interfaces have different strengths and weaknesses. Use whichever one is the most appropriate for the task at hand.
I'm sure that there are lawyers who remember the exact patents and dates better than I, but I'm pretty sure that there are patents that read on the mp3 file format that won't expire for several years. How is Mozilla going to ship with support for mp3 files without putting themselves and their users at risk of patent litigation?
I think the answer is that they're not going to ship MP3 support. I don't see anything about MP3 support on the proposed features page for Firefox 5, 6, and 7:
MP3 support would only come to Firefox if the MP3 licence holders decide to licence MP3 under open, royalty-free terms. I also don't see anything on the features page about built in PDF support. It would be better if ConceivablyTech cited their sources.
I agree that MS is a losing proposition, but symbian will also quickly bring the company to an end. It is a truly terrible OS compared to a modern streamlined OS like iOS of Android.
Yes. On the other hand, I find Maemo to be better than both iOS and Android. I think the problem was that Nokia lost focus when they decided to start with MeeGo. It would have been wiser to maintain focus on Maemo for another year or two while treating MeeGo as more of a background project.
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I know zero out of dozens of people that like the direction firefox is going in.
I know dozens out of dozens of people that like the direction firefox is going in. I've found the latest versions of Firefox to be faster with more capability than previous versions. It's why I use the new releases and not the old releases.
And I don't really trust an organization like Mozilla to be able to create something that meets the needs of most people. Their staunch opposition to H.264 is a prime example of this. H.264 is an non-negotiable requirement for me. If you won't support it, I can't use your product. Period.
Then the Web is not for you. It isn't some kind of Mozilla standard that Mozilla is worried about, it's Web standards. Most Web software developers disagree with the idea that closed, royalty bearing formats are an acceptable choice for the Web. Mozilla, as we know, disagrees with you. The W3C disagrees with you. Opera disagrees with you. Google disagrees with you. And Tim Berners-Lee, of course, disagrees with you.
WebM was not developed within an ISO recognized standards development organization. It never had a hope of being patent-free: the process was not open, not due-process, and for that reason and others the folks who might have been willing to donate their IP to the effort were not properly motivated.
Neither was Vorbis. Vorbis has been used in huge projects by huge companies for over a decade. Why has it remained royalty-free? Why doesn't VP8 similarly have "a hope" of remaining royalty-free? Until the MPEG LA or one of the companies that allegedly hold patents essential to VP8 have something substantive to show there is no proof that VP8 infringes any patents. All the MPEG LA is doing now is what they've always done since the launch of WebM: scaremongering.
The worst part for these individuals is that a lock-out of Google+ includes being locked out of all Google services, including email, calendar, and documents.
Which is why it's always important avoid concentrating your services in just one provider.
Mozilla has 1/10th the resources on this that Google does, and trying to go toe-to-toe with them on release speed will swiftly reduce Firefox to an unusable mess
I don't think it will. The transition from Firefox 4 to Firefox 5 happened easily enough. I read the future feature list the other day (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features) and the bigger features are targeted for Firefox 7, rather than trying to somehow rush to shove them into Firefox 6.
The rate of development hasn't changed, just the frequency of releases. All that means in practice is that features or improvements that are complete and ready to use are released sooner than if they had to wait for other unrelated features to be complete before there's a major release.
Mozilla should understand that the 90s are over and people are no longer buying a new computer every 2 years and upgrade their software even more often. The new features (ALL of them) are not needed in the default install. They could be tested using extensions but there is absolutely no reason any more to change ANYTHING just for change's sake.
Compared to Firefox 3.0, Firefox 5 has significant performance improvements in its JavaScript and render engines. You can't reasonably implement those changes as an add-on because it will be too slow. You really are missing out if you're still using Firefox 3.0. Firefox 5 is faster and more capable.
BASIC Gorilla tactics 101:
No, basic gorilla tactics are to live in troops in tropical and subtropical forests in central Africa.
BlueGriffon is worth a try: http://www.bluegriffon.org/
The problem, if you can call it that, is that the distro of choice for GNOME3 (Fedora 15) makes it a little hard to get going out of the box. It's not by any means insurmountable, but it's a little harder than it should be as some things are missing entirely (an Office suite really ought to come preinstalled) and playing "find the repo/RPM" is a lot harder than "It's probably already there, and if not it's trivial to find a PPA" of Ubuntu.
It might not have been there by default if you installed from one of the live CDs as opposed to the full DVD. I don't know what's included on the Fedora CD spins by default as I tend to use the full DVD versions or I use preupgrade to update an existing system in place.
Still, installing office applications is trivial and you don't need to play "find the repo/RPM". RPMs are organised into groups and the groups are easy to list with either on the command line with yum or with the several graphical package managers available (like yumex, gpk-application, etc). You should have an entry in your desktop environment's menu called "Add/Remove Software" by default (which will probably be gpk-application). Go to the Office group and pick the packages you want. Alternatively, you can just install by group on the command line with yum groupinstall Office. LibreOffice is part of the default group install for the Office group.
And why Firefox 4 fails utterly. They literally did remove the 'status bar'. Not an ability to hide it, it's gone.
At least one case where Google isn't forcing the change down on people...what a concept.
Install the Status-4-Evar add-on and your status bar is back. This is why Firefox 4 wins completely. It's extremely extensible. Alternatively, you can use Firefox 4's add-on bar to display status oriented add-ons and toolbar icons and buttons similarly to the old status bar. I use the add-on bar to display two extensions I happen to like (ShowIP and ServerSpy).
Looks like you either don't have Adobe Flash installed or are using an older version of Adobe Flash. To dish out revenge on the green pigs who stole the Birds' eggs you'll need to: Install Google Chrome, a fast browser from Google that comes with Flash built-in. or Install the latest version of Adobe Flash.
Pirates Love Daisies, on the other hand, is an example of a game that works well in modern browsers with no plugins.
Android barely qualifies as a form of "Linux." Yes, it uses a Linux kernel, but the fact is largely incidental - there's no real technical reason that Android couldn't be built on BSD or even WinCE if Google or an OEM wanted it. It isn't close to POSIX-compatible, it only runs "managed" (VM-based) apps, and it isn't even open-source as of 3.0.
So install MeeGo. MeeGo is quite strongly aligned with the upstream projects it makes use of. It really is a desktop Linux distribution for mobile devices.
I avoid the problem to begin with by not installing Flash in the first place. It all depends on your usage patterns, of course, but I find I no longer need Flash. Yes, some websites or specific features of some websites just don't work without Flash but for me these cases are increasingly in the minority.
It's worth looking again: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nouveau_2639_flip&num=1
Does the WebM Project require that I join the CCL to use WebM?
No. Xiph.org, Matroska and Google make the WebM technologies available under an open-source BSD license. The terms and conditions of that open-source license have not changed.
Woolworths and Coles are the major supermarket chains in Australia. Woolworths has offered an online delivery service for over a decade (https://www.homeshop.com.au/website/index.jsp) and Coles also has a delivery service (https://www.colesonline.com.au/).
Heritage is distributing 685 iPads to students this school year, with plans to boost that figure to 730 by next school year. It is installing more than 100 educational apps on the iPads, and tying the devices to facility-wide Wi-Fi and Google-branded Internet services such as Gmail.
More consumers for Apple and Google I suppose. Would not the money spent on 685 iPads be more productively spent by hiring teachers, even if it were just one additional teacher? One good teacher can make a world of difference to child's education. A difference that I feel confident eclipses anything that either Apple or Google have to offer.
Is Xbox Live integration a good feature? Yes, if you already have it. If you're talking about my grandmother who has doesn't care for a "YBox" or "PlaySituation" or a "Whey", it's no good for her.
I imagine the intention is to use XBox Live as the backend for games on Windows Phone. So if your grandmother cares about Angry Birds she will perhaps end up caring about XBox Live as well.
By 'hugely', you mean they are going to flog the hell out of the SINGLE phone they'll have ready by then?
Yes, similarly to how Apple flogged and continues to flog the hell out of their single iOS phone.
Yeah, that's gonna happen.
It might happen. Nokia will be pushing Windows Phone hugely at the start of next year, so much so that I suspect they'll discount their initial models quite heavily. Windows Phone usage will no doubt grow, it will just be a question of by how much.
But numbers don't lie — or exaggerate.
That's a lie — and an exaggeration.
A command line is more flexible than a GUI could ever be. It just has a steeper learning curve. Since computers are more mainstream these days GUIs are more prevalent. That doesn't decrease the value of command lines though.
It depends on the task. A command line interface will never be as good as a GUI for image editing, for example. Ultimately, graphical user interfaces and command line interfaces have different strengths and weaknesses. Use whichever one is the most appropriate for the task at hand.
I'm sure that there are lawyers who remember the exact patents and dates better than I, but I'm pretty sure that there are patents that read on the mp3 file format that won't expire for several years. How is Mozilla going to ship with support for mp3 files without putting themselves and their users at risk of patent litigation?
I think the answer is that they're not going to ship MP3 support. I don't see anything about MP3 support on the proposed features page for Firefox 5, 6, and 7:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Features
MP3 support would only come to Firefox if the MP3 licence holders decide to licence MP3 under open, royalty-free terms. I also don't see anything on the features page about built in PDF support. It would be better if ConceivablyTech cited their sources.
I agree that MS is a losing proposition, but symbian will also quickly bring the company to an end. It is a truly terrible OS compared to a modern streamlined OS like iOS of Android.
Yes. On the other hand, I find Maemo to be better than both iOS and Android. I think the problem was that Nokia lost focus when they decided to start with MeeGo. It would have been wiser to maintain focus on Maemo for another year or two while treating MeeGo as more of a background project.
Some details on how the download visualization works: http://blog.mozilla.com/data/2011/03/22/how-glow-mozilla-org-gets-its-data/