I've read this rant a few times now, and of all of his reasons, none are very compelling.
* <script> and <style> elements in XHTML sent as text/html have to be escaped using ridiculously complicated strings.
Or you could refer to external files which you should probably be doing anyways. Besides, it's 2005. Are there still browsers in use that don't recognize the script tag? I haven't run across one in at least five years. Even browseres that don't support JavaScript at least know to ignore the contents of this tag.
* A CSS stylesheet written for an HTML4 document is interpreted slightly differently in an XHTML context (e.g. the element is not magical in XHTML, tag names must be written in lowercase in XHTML). Thus documents change rendering when parsed as XHTML.
Well, the second case is easily solved by writing tag names in lower case anyway. Wow, that was tough. I can't remember ever seeing a non-contrived case where the first was an issue, and even then it could be trivially worked around.
* A DOM-based script written for an HTML4 document has subtly different semantics in an XHTML context...
This is probably his one valid point. I do agree with this one, but also feel that it could be worked around with a little thought if you had a valid reason to use XHTML. Mainly you just need to use.toUpperCase() or.toLowerCase() when checking tag names, and you have to be able to detect whether to use namesapace aware functions or not based on which mime type you are using. Also, for sites (like slashdot) that don't use much javascript, this is probably not really an issue.
* Scripts that use document.write() will not work in XHTML contexts. Good! document.write() should have been put out to die years ago.
* Current UAs are, for text/html content, HTML4 user agents (at best) and certainly not XHTML user agents. Therefore if you send them XHTML you are sending them content in a language which is not native to them, and instead relying on their error handling. Since this is not defined in any specification, it may vary from one user agent to the other.
And this is different from sending your document as HTML 4 how?
* XHTML documents that use the "/>" notation, as in "<link/>" have very different semantics when parsed as HTML4. So if there was to be a fully compliant HTML4 UA, it would be quite correct to show ">" characters all over the page.
Probably technically true, but I've never seen this "SHORTTAG minimisation" discussed anywhere else, and I can't recall ever having dealt with a UA that treats self closing tags in such a manner.
In short, there are issues to watch out for, but there are a lot of cases when XHTML may be preferable to HTML 4 (e.g. using an XML based content management system), and as the most popular web browser on the internet doesn't handle XHTML when served as application/xhtml+xml (and it has been announced that the next version will not either) and all remotely modern UA's will handle XHTML served as text/html, there are a lot of cases where it doesn't put make sense to put off adoption of XHTML for 2 years or more until the majority of browsers can handle it properly.
That said, HTML 4 is still a perfectly valid alternative, and for a site like Slashdot where there are no compelling reasons to go with XHTML, and a lot of valid reasons for not, I don't see why anybody should complain that the site was done as HTML4+CSS and not XHTML+CSS.
Unless it's been added very recently, AIX, Tru64, and HP-UX do not support them. And if I understand correctly, the Solaris implementation was incompatible with the rest until relatively recently.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't be added, but it seems to me that saying glibc is virtually the only major C library that doesn't support them is a bit off the mark. They do seem to be rather popular among open source developers, though, and it seems to me that should be enough reason to include them, especially in a community that likes to talk about how it is inherently more secure than its major competitor.
Personally, though, I've never been particularly interested in these functions or seen any need to use them even though I've known about them for a while. Besides being very non-portable, they don't seem to me to provide much benefit over memcpy other than guaranteed null-termination, which is beyond trivial so long as you are aware of the issue. And are people who aren't aware of the issue really going to know to use these functions rather than str* or strn*?
hey, just in case you missed it, the use of the word controversial in the blurb was not used to talk about global warming, but rather what connection global warming may have on the number of hurricanes we have been seeing over recent years. a number of leading hurricane researchers have claimed that they believe any connection between the two is tenous at best, leading me to agree that this is indeed still an area of some controversy.
by the way, you state the "tipping point" claim as fact, while even the scientists making the observations stated that we may have passed a tipping point. we don't know yet if there is such a point, or where it is.
If one thing is constant in programming any app, as time goes on and new versions come out, there are always new bugs and problems.
Never mind that Internet Explorer has been virtually unchanged for over four years now, and they are still releasing patches to critical vunlnerabilities every month.... If Microsoft was putting out new versions of IE with new features every six months or even every year, I would understand, but you'd think after four years of patches, they'd be doing a little better on the security front.
The GNU C library is one of the only C libraries without this functionality, because of that many programers continue to make the same mistakes that the strl* functions were intended to fix. Not including good, frequently used, defacto standardized code is a really dumb idea
Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but up until a week ago, I was not aware these functions were implemented anywhere outside of *BSD. Besides BSD and Solaris, which other C libraries implement these functions?
FF is fine for those that don't need an email client but once you need both the suite is better suited. I've done both and I'm back at the suite due to the smaller memory footprint.
Good for you. Meanwhile, I've done both, and stuck with Firefox and Thunderbird because I like the the way they work better. How much RAM do they use? I haven't the foggiest. Disk space? Not really sure... Does one load faster than the other? Not that I can tell. Maybe by a tenth of a second or two. But I wouldn't know which; my watch only has a second hand.
Personally, I don't see much need for better integration between my email and web browsing. As long as a new browser opens when I click a link in an email, and a new email message comes up when I click a mailto: link in my web browser, I'm happy.
That said, I would love to use Mozilla as my primary browser again if they can sort out some of their serious user interface shortcomings, because I do have some issues with Firefox, but last I checked (1.7.1?) they still had a long way to go to even match Firefox, much less surpass it.
And for the love of ${deity}, please come up with a better name. I don't care what it is- I'm assuming that there are good reasons that the "Mozilla" name has been dropped, but come on guys, you could have tried harder than that.
The only reason, and I do mean literally the only reason, that people use Firefox is because it looks like Internet Explorer, and people are afraid of change.
bzzt. wrong. I, and many other people, use Firefox because the User Interface is (or was) far, far superior. I don't care that it isn't any faster than Mozilla or doesn't use any less disk space, and I am fully aware of the differences (or lack thereof) between Firefox and the Mozilla suite, but I still use Firefox. It has nothing to do with Internet Explorer or fear of change, because I have never liked Internet Explorer, and when I have used it, it has always been begrudgingly.
Mozilla's usability was a nightmare when Phoenix was introduced, and Phoenix rapidly surpassed it. Only recently has Mozilla started to catch up again, and only because Firefox has changed very little (from a UI perspective) since version 0.9.something.
As for the UI. The default themes that ship with Mozilla/Seamonkey are just horrid! However, there are MANY third party themes that look great. I use the pinball theme here. Mozilla looks grea with it!
It's real. The only choice we have, in the short run, is whether we wish to mitigate the changes by cutting down greenhouse gases -- immediately. We wait, there'll be new oceanfront property really soon.
Bring it on. We don't really want Florida anyway...
Hey, I just moved to the mile high city a year ago, what do i care?
I personally witness front-wheel-drive vehicles spin out on icy roads nearly every winter. They lose control and go in the ditch, if they're lucky. But my heavy Suburban with its long wheelbase is hard to intentionally skid. There is so much weight over the rear wheels, the 4WD is unnecessary even in the snow.
I don't know where you live, but I have seen far more SUV's in the ditch on snowy roads than all other types of vehicle combined. Far too many idiot SUV drivers think their four wheel drive can protect them from the laws of physics...
It's a far cry from the planned obsolescence we see in every high-MPG vehicle on the road. Care to list any? I drive a Toyota Corolla, which gets 35-40 MPG, and I will probably be driving it for as long or longer than someone who bought a new Suburban manufactured the same year.
With those odds in mind, what kind of a fool would ever put fuel economy over safety & quality? Small cars are not automatically unsafe. My Corolla has as high or higher safety rating than most SUV's. I know someone who was in a head on collision (about 60 mph combined speed) with a full size Ford pickup driving a VW Jetta and he walked away from it in better shape than the other guy. Personally, I chose my Corolla for quality- the fact that it has good fuel economy and safety was an added benefit.
If it does not have ABS...How do i stop?? Whats that? I can't tailgate and wham the brakes at the last second?!?!?!?!
just fyi, abs does not actually decrease your stoppping distance under pretty much any circumstances. the only thing it does is prevent skidding so that you can still maintain steering control of your vehicle while braking in low traction conditions.
Even without RTFA: The article details that their methods did not require a 'training text' in order to calibrate the conversion algorithm as has been used previously. (emphasis mine)
They are acknowledging that what you describe has been possible for some time, but what they have been able to achieve different.
In 4 years, I would give 75% odds on something breaking.
but how much of that 75% is in the first or fourth year? most computer makers have a one year manufacturer warranty as standard. Off the top of my head, the laptops that I bought offered an option of a three year warranty for a substantial extra amount of money. i'm not saying warranties are bad- i've had several items that i've replaced under the manufacturer's warranty. however, i've never had a single case where the standard manufacturer's warranty was not sufficient.
and if i ever do come accross the case where the extended warranty may have helped, all the money i've saved over the years by not paying for an extended warranty will easily be enough to cover a repair or replacement, even for a laptop.
This would prevent much malicious software from running, and avoids the "default permit" behavior that the article author finds so odious.
Not really. It would prevent malicious programs from performing actions that change system files or system settings, but that's about it. Plenty of spyware, adware, and viruses/worms will still run just fine without any administrator privileges.
the 500 word essay, while insightful, totally missed the point. the essay is talking about hacking as a sociopolitical thing. the article is talking about hacking from a security practitioner's perspective.
he is saying that security people shouldn't be offering jobs or other incentives to hackers for finding vulnerabilities, nor should they try to spend their time learning to be hackers in the hopes that it will help them to become a better security professional. either of these techniques basically condemns you to implementing your security policies via mistake number 2, enumerating the bad things.
The blurb is somewhat misleading (go figure...). The article never said that anti-virus software was one of the six dumbest ideas. He merely said that software that works by enumerating all of the possible malicious programs/traffic/behaviors/etc. was a dumb idea. In other words, most anti-virus software as currently implemented is a dumb idea. not using any at all is (probably) a dumber idea, though.
that said, after i got sick of norton antivirus back around 1997 or so (can't remember if that was before or after they started charging for updates.) i never used any av software until someone pointed me in the direction of avg antivirus in early 2003, and i never had any probems during that time. i use it now as an added backup since it's not too intrusive, but i don't ever expect or rely on it to protect me.
do the newer nokia's allow you to have more than one phone numer per entry in the phonebook yet? that was enough to keep me away from nokia the last time i looked, even though it seemed everone and their brother owned that phone. (forget what model it was but it was the little tiny one that was in all the movies back around 2000 or so.)
it still bothers me that my first samsung cell phone that i bought in 1998 had a better overall user interface, and particularly a far better phone book, than any other phone i've ever owned (excepting the two palm pilot hybrids.)
i think that in itself would be enough to make me want to spend the extra money on a palm/phone hybrid the next time i upgrade. even though i stopped using a palm pilot some time ago, it would be worth the money just for a phone with a decent interface. too bad you can't get a decent flip phone/palm pilot anymore.
Maybe I've just been lucky, but I've gone through three different laptops and never needed a warranty repair on any of them. Neither did either of the other two people at the consulting group I used to work in who also had laptops. (We bought the warranties anyway because they were company owned instead of personal property, but we never used them.) We had one issue where the lcd screen cracked because one of the partners tried to slide his car seat back while the laptop was sitting behind it, but that was on a >5 year old laptop and no warranty that I am aware of would have covered it.
In fact, the only computer related warranty-like repair I've ever needed was getting fedex to repair a damaged case and motherboard that were mishandled in shipping. Other than that, I have always been perfectly content to do as the article suggests- use the standard manufacturers warranty, and if the item breaks after the standard warranty is up, use the money I saved to buy a new one.
This seems to vary an awful lot depending on who you talk to. I only know one person who uses MSN- fortunately she also uses Yahoo, so i can still talk to her without creating an account on MSN (She's also the only contact on my Yahoo account, but I already had the account anyway because I had to create an account to do some tests with their webmail interface). Almost everyone I know (including the last three companies I've worked for) uses AOL Instant Messenger, and the rest are still on ICQ after all these years.
this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9458 has been open since 1999 and has over 150 votes. and quite frankly, i don't think the votes mean much. i remember reading a quote from a major maintainer saying that he might consider how many votes a bug had if it was something in the tens of thousands. (this was about two years ago, regarding the most voted on bug in bugzilla, with a little over 500 votes. and still open, by the way...)
and as much as i like mozilla/firefox and appreciate the work that the developers are putting into it, i still find it ridiculous how they will frequently mass move bugs that they don't feel like fixing (even ones marked as release blockers) from one release to the next. the bug above was originally targetted for mozilla milestone M9...
It looks fine to me other than that Internet Explorer doesn't support max-width. But seeing as the layout doesn't break with or without it, the only way anyone would ever notice the missing max-width is if they looked at the page side by side in both browsers. So I don't really see the issue there.
Slashdot Mirror
I've read this rant a few times now, and of all of his reasons, none are very compelling.
.toUpperCase() or .toLowerCase() when checking tag names, and you have to be able to detect whether to use namesapace aware functions or not based on which mime type you are using. Also, for sites (like slashdot) that don't use much javascript, this is probably not really an issue.
/>" have very different semantics when parsed as HTML4. So if there was to be a fully compliant HTML4 UA, it would be quite correct to show ">" characters all over the page.
* <script> and <style> elements in XHTML sent as text/html have to be escaped using ridiculously complicated strings.
Or you could refer to external files which you should probably be doing anyways. Besides, it's 2005. Are there still browsers in use that don't recognize the script tag? I haven't run across one in at least five years. Even browseres that don't support JavaScript at least know to ignore the contents of this tag.
* A CSS stylesheet written for an HTML4 document is interpreted slightly differently in an XHTML context (e.g. the element is not magical in XHTML, tag names must be written in lowercase in XHTML). Thus documents change rendering when parsed as XHTML.
Well, the second case is easily solved by writing tag names in lower case anyway. Wow, that was tough. I can't remember ever seeing a non-contrived case where the first was an issue, and even then it could be trivially worked around.
* A DOM-based script written for an HTML4 document has subtly different semantics in an XHTML context...
This is probably his one valid point. I do agree with this one, but also feel that it could be worked around with a little thought if you had a valid reason to use XHTML. Mainly you just need to use
* Scripts that use document.write() will not work in XHTML contexts.
Good! document.write() should have been put out to die years ago.
* Current UAs are, for text/html content, HTML4 user agents (at best) and certainly not XHTML user agents. Therefore if you send them XHTML you are sending them content in a language which is not native to them, and instead relying on their error handling. Since this is not defined in any specification, it may vary from one user agent to the other.
And this is different from sending your document as HTML 4 how?
* XHTML documents that use the "/>" notation, as in "<link
Probably technically true, but I've never seen this "SHORTTAG minimisation" discussed anywhere else, and I can't recall ever having dealt with a UA that treats self closing tags in such a manner.
In short, there are issues to watch out for, but there are a lot of cases when XHTML may be preferable to HTML 4 (e.g. using an XML based content management system), and as the most popular web browser on the internet doesn't handle XHTML when served as application/xhtml+xml (and it has been announced that the next version will not either) and all remotely modern UA's will handle XHTML served as text/html, there are a lot of cases where it doesn't put make sense to put off adoption of XHTML for 2 years or more until the majority of browsers can handle it properly.
That said, HTML 4 is still a perfectly valid alternative, and for a site like Slashdot where there are no compelling reasons to go with XHTML, and a lot of valid reasons for not, I don't see why anybody should complain that the site was done as HTML4+CSS and not XHTML+CSS.
This new slashdot layout is freakin me out... looks cool, but I have to look around to find things again.
weird. i hadn't even noticed.
until i hit reply to comment that i hadn't noticed...
other than the comment page the site looks exactly the same to me. even there the difference doesn't seem that big.
Unless it's been added very recently, AIX, Tru64, and HP-UX do not support them. And if I understand correctly, the Solaris implementation was incompatible with the rest until relatively recently.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't be added, but it seems to me that saying glibc is virtually the only major C library that doesn't support them is a bit off the mark. They do seem to be rather popular among open source developers, though, and it seems to me that should be enough reason to include them, especially in a community that likes to talk about how it is inherently more secure than its major competitor.
Personally, though, I've never been particularly interested in these functions or seen any need to use them even though I've known about them for a while. Besides being very non-portable, they don't seem to me to provide much benefit over memcpy other than guaranteed null-termination, which is beyond trivial so long as you are aware of the issue. And are people who aren't aware of the issue really going to know to use these functions rather than str* or strn*?
hey, just in case you missed it, the use of the word controversial in the blurb was not used to talk about global warming, but rather what connection global warming may have on the number of hurricanes we have been seeing over recent years. a number of leading hurricane researchers have claimed that they believe any connection between the two is tenous at best, leading me to agree that this is indeed still an area of some controversy.
by the way, you state the "tipping point" claim as fact, while even the scientists making the observations stated that we may have passed a tipping point. we don't know yet if there is such a point, or where it is.
no, actually i think it's a triplicate.
If one thing is constant in programming any app, as time goes on and new versions come out, there are always new bugs and problems.
Never mind that Internet Explorer has been virtually unchanged for over four years now, and they are still releasing patches to critical vunlnerabilities every month.... If Microsoft was putting out new versions of IE with new features every six months or even every year, I would understand, but you'd think after four years of patches, they'd be doing a little better on the security front.
The GNU C library is one of the only C libraries without this functionality, because of that many programers continue to make the same mistakes that the strl* functions were intended to fix. Not including good, frequently used, defacto standardized code is a really dumb idea
Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but up until a week ago, I was not aware these functions were implemented anywhere outside of *BSD. Besides BSD and Solaris, which other C libraries implement these functions?
FF is fine for those that don't need an email client but once you need both the suite is better suited. I've done both and I'm back at the suite due to the smaller memory footprint.
Good for you. Meanwhile, I've done both, and stuck with Firefox and Thunderbird because I like the the way they work better. How much RAM do they use? I haven't the foggiest. Disk space? Not really sure... Does one load faster than the other? Not that I can tell. Maybe by a tenth of a second or two. But I wouldn't know which; my watch only has a second hand.
Personally, I don't see much need for better integration between my email and web browsing. As long as a new browser opens when I click a link in an email, and a new email message comes up when I click a mailto: link in my web browser, I'm happy.
That said, I would love to use Mozilla as my primary browser again if they can sort out some of their serious user interface shortcomings, because I do have some issues with Firefox, but last I checked (1.7.1?) they still had a long way to go to even match Firefox, much less surpass it.
And for the love of ${deity}, please come up with a better name. I don't care what it is- I'm assuming that there are good reasons that the "Mozilla" name has been dropped, but come on guys, you could have tried harder than that.
The only reason, and I do mean literally the only reason, that people use Firefox is because it looks like Internet Explorer, and people are afraid of change.
bzzt. wrong. I, and many other people, use Firefox because the User Interface is (or was) far, far superior. I don't care that it isn't any faster than Mozilla or doesn't use any less disk space, and I am fully aware of the differences (or lack thereof) between Firefox and the Mozilla suite, but I still use Firefox. It has nothing to do with Internet Explorer or fear of change, because I have never liked Internet Explorer, and when I have used it, it has always been begrudgingly.
Mozilla's usability was a nightmare when Phoenix was introduced, and Phoenix rapidly surpassed it. Only recently has Mozilla started to catch up again, and only because Firefox has changed very little (from a UI perspective) since version 0.9.something.
As for the UI. The default themes that ship with Mozilla/Seamonkey are just horrid! However, there are MANY third party themes that look great. I use the pinball theme here. Mozilla looks grea with it!
UI != themes
It's real. The only choice we have, in the short run, is whether we wish to mitigate the changes by cutting down greenhouse gases -- immediately. We wait, there'll be new oceanfront property really soon.
Bring it on. We don't really want Florida anyway...
Hey, I just moved to the mile high city a year ago, what do i care?
I personally witness front-wheel-drive vehicles spin out on icy roads nearly every winter. They lose control and go in the ditch, if they're lucky. But my heavy Suburban with its long wheelbase is hard to intentionally skid. There is so much weight over the rear wheels, the 4WD is unnecessary even in the snow.
I don't know where you live, but I have seen far more SUV's in the ditch on snowy roads than all other types of vehicle combined. Far too many idiot SUV drivers think their four wheel drive can protect them from the laws of physics...
It's a far cry from the planned obsolescence we see in every high-MPG vehicle on the road.
Care to list any? I drive a Toyota Corolla, which gets 35-40 MPG, and I will probably be driving it for as long or longer than someone who bought a new Suburban manufactured the same year.
With those odds in mind, what kind of a fool would ever put fuel economy over safety & quality?
Small cars are not automatically unsafe. My Corolla has as high or higher safety rating than most SUV's. I know someone who was in a head on collision (about 60 mph combined speed) with a full size Ford pickup driving a VW Jetta and he walked away from it in better shape than the other guy. Personally, I chose my Corolla for quality- the fact that it has good fuel economy and safety was an added benefit.
If it does not have ABS...How do i stop?? Whats that? I can't tailgate and wham the brakes at the last second?!?!?!?!
just fyi, abs does not actually decrease your stoppping distance under pretty much any circumstances. the only thing it does is prevent skidding so that you can still maintain steering control of your vehicle while braking in low traction conditions.
Nope, sorry, they forgot XML and Object-Relational Impedance Mismatch.
Not bad, but I'm sure with a little more work they could throw at least half a dozen other nearly meaningless phrases in there.
Even without RTFA:
The article details that their methods did not require a 'training text' in order to calibrate the conversion algorithm as has been used previously.
(emphasis mine)
They are acknowledging that what you describe has been possible for some time, but what they have been able to achieve different.
In 4 years, I would give 75% odds on something breaking.
but how much of that 75% is in the first or fourth year? most computer makers have a one year manufacturer warranty as standard. Off the top of my head, the laptops that I bought offered an option of a three year warranty for a substantial extra amount of money. i'm not saying warranties are bad- i've had several items that i've replaced under the manufacturer's warranty. however, i've never had a single case where the standard manufacturer's warranty was not sufficient.
and if i ever do come accross the case where the extended warranty may have helped, all the money i've saved over the years by not paying for an extended warranty will easily be enough to cover a repair or replacement, even for a laptop.
while i did notice that, i only thought about it for half a second or so, as it still made more sense than most of what i read here on slashdot....
This would prevent much malicious software from running, and avoids the "default permit" behavior that the article author finds so odious.
Not really. It would prevent malicious programs from performing actions that change system files or system settings, but that's about it. Plenty of spyware, adware, and viruses/worms will still run just fine without any administrator privileges.
the 500 word essay, while insightful, totally missed the point. the essay is talking about hacking as a sociopolitical thing. the article is talking about hacking from a security practitioner's perspective.
he is saying that security people shouldn't be offering jobs or other incentives to hackers for finding vulnerabilities, nor should they try to spend their time learning to be hackers in the hopes that it will help them to become a better security professional. either of these techniques basically condemns you to implementing your security policies via mistake number 2, enumerating the bad things.
The blurb is somewhat misleading (go figure...). The article never said that anti-virus software was one of the six dumbest ideas. He merely said that software that works by enumerating all of the possible malicious programs/traffic/behaviors/etc. was a dumb idea. In other words, most anti-virus software as currently implemented is a dumb idea. not using any at all is (probably) a dumber idea, though.
that said, after i got sick of norton antivirus back around 1997 or so (can't remember if that was before or after they started charging for updates.) i never used any av software until someone pointed me in the direction of avg antivirus in early 2003, and i never had any probems during that time. i use it now as an added backup since it's not too intrusive, but i don't ever expect or rely on it to protect me.
do the newer nokia's allow you to have more than one phone numer per entry in the phonebook yet? that was enough to keep me away from nokia the last time i looked, even though it seemed everone and their brother owned that phone. (forget what model it was but it was the little tiny one that was in all the movies back around 2000 or so.)
it still bothers me that my first samsung cell phone that i bought in 1998 had a better overall user interface, and particularly a far better phone book, than any other phone i've ever owned (excepting the two palm pilot hybrids.)
i think that in itself would be enough to make me want to spend the extra money on a palm/phone hybrid the next time i upgrade. even though i stopped using a palm pilot some time ago, it would be worth the money just for a phone with a decent interface. too bad you can't get a decent flip phone/palm pilot anymore.
Maybe I've just been lucky, but I've gone through three different laptops and never needed a warranty repair on any of them. Neither did either of the other two people at the consulting group I used to work in who also had laptops. (We bought the warranties anyway because they were company owned instead of personal property, but we never used them.) We had one issue where the lcd screen cracked because one of the partners tried to slide his car seat back while the laptop was sitting behind it, but that was on a >5 year old laptop and no warranty that I am aware of would have covered it.
In fact, the only computer related warranty-like repair I've ever needed was getting fedex to repair a damaged case and motherboard that were mishandled in shipping. Other than that, I have always been perfectly content to do as the article suggests- use the standard manufacturers warranty, and if the item breaks after the standard warranty is up, use the money I saved to buy a new one.
This seems to vary an awful lot depending on who you talk to. I only know one person who uses MSN- fortunately she also uses Yahoo, so i can still talk to her without creating an account on MSN (She's also the only contact on my Yahoo account, but I already had the account anyway because I had to create an account to do some tests with their webmail interface). Almost everyone I know (including the last three companies I've worked for) uses AOL Instant Messenger, and the rest are still on ICQ after all these years.
only 2002? pfft!!!
this bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9458
has been open since 1999 and has over 150 votes. and quite frankly, i don't think the votes mean much. i remember reading a quote from a major maintainer saying that he might consider how many votes a bug had if it was something in the tens of thousands. (this was about two years ago, regarding the most voted on bug in bugzilla, with a little over 500 votes. and still open, by the way...)
and as much as i like mozilla/firefox and appreciate the work that the developers are putting into it, i still find it ridiculous how they will frequently mass move bugs that they don't feel like fixing (even ones marked as release blockers) from one release to the next. the bug above was originally targetted for mozilla milestone M9...
It looks fine to me other than that Internet Explorer doesn't support max-width. But seeing as the layout doesn't break with or without it, the only way anyone would ever notice the missing max-width is if they looked at the page side by side in both browsers. So I don't really see the issue there.