Loading embedded EXE files was probably useful in a controlled corporate environment back when Windows 98 was current, but an unbelievably stupid idea in the age of the internet.
Maybe they were jealous of Microsoft's long monopoly with their "Malware Development Toolkit" otherwise known as "Office".
At least the PDF standard is open enough so it's possible to use alternatives to Acrobat and Reader, as opposed to Flash, in which you either have to eat the dog food, or completely live without the functionality. Yes, I'm talking to you, Hulu.
See I realize that, but I'm getting the impression from people here the nightlies are possibly not even the same branch.
The point I'm making, however clumsily, that I was using the nightlies without issue for a long time (and my coworker had been using them far longer) and only when the beta period of Firefox 4 started did I start seeing problems in the nightlies, often significant ones. I also started seeing a lot of changes, although they were usually cosmetic.
Perhaps I don't understand the process here. I assumed that nightlies are just that, nightlies, and that periodically they reach a point where they are ready to tag one of those nightlies as a milestone beta release. Given that understanding, it's confusing to me to be seeing lots of changes and new behavior... like that period for a couple weeks where 301 redirecting intermittently stopped working.
So while I understand, and take responsibility for using alpha-level versions of the software, I don't understand why the nightlies suddenly became a lot less stable, to the point where I was frequently reverting to 3.6, after being pretty consistently usable for months. Given the original ship date of October (IIRC), this didn't make sense at all.
Nevertheless, I remain a big fan of Firefox and appreciate the tremendous efforts of the devs and am looking forward to version 4 in its full glory.
The only thing that would please me more is finding out a way to tell which extensions make Firefox run like a fat porch hound under Linux (where I'm only running 3.6).
I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that Minefield is the nightlies and periodically they tag a particular release as a new beta. Are you suggesting they aren't the same branch?
The sad thing is that it took Reader about 3 or 4 versions not to be complete crap and the moment it actually got good they started bloating it almost as much as Emacs, except with stuff that is neither cool and powerful nor useful to the vast majority of users.
What should be a simple lightweight document viewer now requires an installer a significant fraction of the size of an entire Windows installation from just a decade or so ago.
You could have predicted this lateness because the Firefox folks seem to think "beta" means "Let's add new features every couple of days". I've been using Minefield on and off for several months and it got a lot less stable once it hit the "beta" stage, about the same time that they started changing a bunch of things and adding a bunch of features. Before it went to "beta" it had been fine for a long time, but several times since the beta stage I've had to revert to 3.6.
Yes, I realize I'm using nightlies and should expect bugs, etc, but the traditional definition (not that it is relevant any more) of "beta test" is that the software is basically complete and is being tested for stability and regression, _not_ that it is in a mode where new features are being added on a weekly basis.
I'm looking forward to Firefox 4 and am sure it will be good overall when it's finally done, but the progress in this period of development has not filled me with a lot of confidence that this will be any time soon.
Well, it boils down to this. Any system that has to rely on the good nature of people will eventually fail. The only solution is not concentrating power along with establishing checks and balances. The Constitution set up the checks and balances, and tried to limit centralized power, but the Federal government has become so rich and powerful that corruption is endemic and the checks and balances no longer work. Labor unions started out as a balance against the corporations, particularly the "robber barons" of the 19th century. Now the labor unions are themselves so powerful that they are overrun with corruption, and of course, the same thing is true of corporations.
The one fact we know for sure is that we can't perfect human nature so pure capitalism only works well until monopolies develop. Socialism is doomed to fail because it cuts out that middle step of (working until the monopolies form). Pure Communism is doomed to fail because it's a hopelessly illogical concept unless all people are perfect and equal.
In the case of the U.S. if the power were more spread to the states like it was supposed to be, we would evolve more efficient government because there are 50 simultaneous experiments going on. People could vote with their feet leaving poorly-run states for well-run states. They can do that now, but it makes a lot less difference. Then the poorly-run states can say, "Gee whiz, we need fix ourselves or everyone will leave." With the Federal government having the vast bulk of the power they can say, "Gee whiz, people don't like us. Oh, well, what are they going to do, move to France? HA HA HA HA! Pass me the champagne."
I can absolutely promise you I would never work for Microsoft. I've worked for big companies and small companies and medium-sized companies. For me, so I'm not claiming this is true for everyone, big companies were always horrible to work for. In my experience, (same disclaimer), small companies are always much better than big companies, even though all small companies certainly aren't good places to work. In my experience medium companies can go either way. I've worked for good ones (like my current employer, among others) and I've worked for bad ones (like the place that taught me that "Dilbert" is real).
I can assure you, there is nothing that Microsoft would offer me that would make me want to work for them (nor would they want to). I'm sure there are other people whose principles cannot be sold out for a nice office and free soda pop. Please don't insult us by assuming we would all cave for the many benefits a company like Microsoft can provide. If you want to work for MS, that's fine, and if they want you, then it's a win-win, but not all of us think that way.
Office is even a stronger monopoly than Windows itself, if such a thing is possible. And the worst part is that Office (particularly Word and Access, and any of the apps once you start doing any VBA) is just plain horrible. The only reason anyone uses it is because of one of the two following things: 1. It's all they can use. 2. It's all they know how to use.
I can't imagine there's anyone with any real software experience who actually thinks Office is good. OOo is better, although it's hardly great. Of course, when it comes to word processing, I think the whole paradigm has completely failed. IMO, if you're not doing DTP, you should be using markup. Of course, that will never happen for 99.9% of users, even though it would be several orders easier and more efficient. Just think of all the billions of dollars of productivity going down the sinkhole of using Word. It boggles the mind.
Although my evidence is anecdotal, I've sometime noticed a greater tendency to put inappropriate apostrophes on words to make them plural when the word ends with a vowel.
I'm sure some linguist or psychologist could come up with a theory for it. Although there seems to be a huge increase in people using apostrophes in plurals, I, who feel I would never make that mistake, have on occasion done it before I caught myself in the heat of typing some nugget of profundity on/. or wherever. It's like using the wrong "their" (or "they're" or "there")... sometimes our fingers get ahead of our brains (or vice versa). So while some (probably most) of it is people being ignorant of the language, I'm convinced that a lot of it is a natural tendency for brain farts with respect to this particular feature (and other similar ones) of the language.
Now checking for stupid typos... Oh, look, I was spared of the humiliation of making a stupid typo while complaining about stupid typos. Now that I said that, I'm paranoid.
The problem is that they're getting to the point where software lock-in, strong-arming OEMs, making vague unspecific threats about patents and generally acting like a street thug isn't going to work.
If everyone is using an iPhone or an Android device, what's Microsoft going to do, hire people to break their phones? Wait, they might just...
They've been coasting on Windows and Office for 20 years, but that ride is almost done. They'll have to compete for real now, and it will be pretty amusing to watch, since they have clearly forgotten how to do it.
I avoid the self-checkout machines for the same reason. They are a very poorly-designed mishmash of existing hardware items, cobbled haphazardly together using a system that requires manual intervention from an employee if you so much as breathe wrong.
The other day, the employee suggested I use the self-checkout for a fairly large order because the only cashiers had lines, which was a disaster. Basically she had to stand at her console, overriding the machine every couple of items because I had too many groceries to fit in the bagging area, and one of my kids was moving them to the cart as I filled each bag. Of course, the machine threw conniptions every time we so much as touched something in the bagging area. In the end, it probably would have been faster, and definitely would have been much less hassle to wait in line.
You aren't. What's worse is the goofy video they posted by way of explanation.
Hey, GOG.com, for those of us who don't want to wade through a 4-minute video with a low signal-to-noise ratio (or maybe non-existent, I didn't watch after a few seconds), why not simply describe what you have to say?
If someone wants to watch, that's fine, but don't force people to slog through it if all they want to know is what you're doing. I had to use Google to find out what you should have spelled out on your web page. This news story explained that the site's been rewritten but the service will remain basically the same.
So, I've really liked GOG over the past year or so, buying over a dozen games from them, and will probably continue to do business with them, but this stupid stunt is horrible marketing that has alienated and annoyed the very people they are trying to target... paying customers.
I hope her patent has expired or Airbus is going to face some legal problems. Or maybe they licensed it... she has been carrying a couple extra golden lassos.
They didn't have games quite that old. Mostly they were from the mid 90s and onward. The value they provide is enormous. Not only do you get a version of the old game tweaked to run on modern versions of Windows (not to mention the DOSBox games automatically run on Linux and WINE handles most or all of the rest), but you also get PDFs of the manuals and other goodies like soundtracks and game art.
As far as M.U.L.E. goes, there's a project to reimplement the game for modern systems called "Planet M.U.L.E.". I never played the original, but the new version is very good, and they are looking at expanding the game with new optional features that the original never had.
I'll see that and raise you a, "I've bought games from GOG.com I _already_ own for the convenience of getting rid of crippling DRM (e.g., so I can run them without optical media) and for the convenience of having them already configured to run on modern versions of Windows.
Making this move with absolutely no warning whatsoever is grossly unprofessional. I have a purchase I still need to download. Even if GOG.com comes back, how can we ever trust them not to simply pull the plug again?
It seems that no one is interested in selling what people want to buy. It's no wonder piracy is so rampant. It's the only way to get decent value. When the pirated product is inherently worth much more than what you pay for, something is seriously wrong with the whole industry (software, movies, music, etc).
And the cost of creating content is negligible, as Jamendo is proof of.
There is a lot of cool stuff on Jamendo, but I know those artists put a lot of time, effort and investment of equipment into their work. It may be negligible for creating some kinds of music, but for most music, movies, software, and any other content, this is simply not so. Also you're making the same mistake a lot of businesses and all of the government make: That people's time has little or no value. And frankly, at least for the kind of music I enjoy, I would not expect to find much worthwhile content created by people who don't have a huge amount of experience... years or even decades. That's not only a tremendous financial investment (or I should say risk, since "starving artist" is a common term for a good reason), but a tremendous investment in energy as well. Real art is not cheap.
If I, as a software developer, were to take off three months to write a book, something I would dearly love to do, you're talking tens of thousands of dollars of cost. Would I have a reasonable expectation of recouping that in sales, assuming I could even take an extended unpaid leave from my job which is probably not possible? Not without prior experience in publishing, and even then, I would never bet on it.
I've also composed, recorded and produced music in the past and it's very time-consuming to do it right, and time (as well as energy) is not something I have a lot of, so the cost would be prohibitive to me to do anything of any amount of ambition.
So I would not consider the cost of creating anything to be negligible and I fully sympathize with, and support, content creators wanting their due remuneration.
The cost of content might be negligible for a large company but for the individuals who actually do the work, the cost is enormous, and individuals, or small groups of them, are who we care about because that's where real innovation and creativity come from.
You're right. My reaction to this was, "This is news?"
They've had this at our local elementary school as long as I've had kids there, which has been 10 years. The kids each have an ID number they enter when they purchase lunch and we write checks for lunch money. They get to keep the same ID number all through their school "career" (my oldest is in 11th grade) and it saves them the trouble of having to deal with money for lunches and saves us the trouble of dealing with it too.
Sure, because no one who draws attention to himself could possibly have skeletons in his closet waiting to be exposed.
It's equally plausible that this guy has had a long history of this kind of behavior and it's just now catching up with him.
Believe it or not, not everything is a conspiracy and it's quite possible the guy abuses women. If the U.S. Government were really out to get him, there are probably much more effective ways to take him out of the picture than allegations that he behaves badly on dates*.
* Not meant to minimize the crime of rape, which is horrible.
Maybe he's being framed, but to assume it is so is just as naive as to assume it's not.
Slashdot Mirror
Loading embedded EXE files was probably useful in a controlled corporate environment back when Windows 98 was current, but an unbelievably stupid idea in the age of the internet.
Maybe they were jealous of Microsoft's long monopoly with their "Malware Development Toolkit" otherwise known as "Office".
At least the PDF standard is open enough so it's possible to use alternatives to Acrobat and Reader, as opposed to Flash, in which you either have to eat the dog food, or completely live without the functionality. Yes, I'm talking to you, Hulu.
See I realize that, but I'm getting the impression from people here the nightlies are possibly not even the same branch.
The point I'm making, however clumsily, that I was using the nightlies without issue for a long time (and my coworker had been using them far longer) and only when the beta period of Firefox 4 started did I start seeing problems in the nightlies, often significant ones. I also started seeing a lot of changes, although they were usually cosmetic.
Perhaps I don't understand the process here. I assumed that nightlies are just that, nightlies, and that periodically they reach a point where they are ready to tag one of those nightlies as a milestone beta release. Given that understanding, it's confusing to me to be seeing lots of changes and new behavior... like that period for a couple weeks where 301 redirecting intermittently stopped working.
So while I understand, and take responsibility for using alpha-level versions of the software, I don't understand why the nightlies suddenly became a lot less stable, to the point where I was frequently reverting to 3.6, after being pretty consistently usable for months. Given the original ship date of October (IIRC), this didn't make sense at all.
Nevertheless, I remain a big fan of Firefox and appreciate the tremendous efforts of the devs and am looking forward to version 4 in its full glory.
The only thing that would please me more is finding out a way to tell which extensions make Firefox run like a fat porch hound under Linux (where I'm only running 3.6).
I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that Minefield is the nightlies and periodically they tag a particular release as a new beta. Are you suggesting they aren't the same branch?
The sad thing is that it took Reader about 3 or 4 versions not to be complete crap and the moment it actually got good they started bloating it almost as much as Emacs, except with stuff that is neither cool and powerful nor useful to the vast majority of users.
What should be a simple lightweight document viewer now requires an installer a significant fraction of the size of an entire Windows installation from just a decade or so ago.
You could have predicted this lateness because the Firefox folks seem to think "beta" means "Let's add new features every couple of days". I've been using Minefield on and off for several months and it got a lot less stable once it hit the "beta" stage, about the same time that they started changing a bunch of things and adding a bunch of features. Before it went to "beta" it had been fine for a long time, but several times since the beta stage I've had to revert to 3.6.
Yes, I realize I'm using nightlies and should expect bugs, etc, but the traditional definition (not that it is relevant any more) of "beta test" is that the software is basically complete and is being tested for stability and regression, _not_ that it is in a mode where new features are being added on a weekly basis.
I'm looking forward to Firefox 4 and am sure it will be good overall when it's finally done, but the progress in this period of development has not filled me with a lot of confidence that this will be any time soon.
You got further than me. I didn't make it through the first episode.
I do, however, like Caprica. Not all of it, but most of it.
I hear the Juan Williams dartboard is bringing in the scratch!
Please name a major proprietary software company that doesn't operate this way.
Borland! Oh, wait...
Well, it boils down to this. Any system that has to rely on the good nature of people will eventually fail. The only solution is not concentrating power along with establishing checks and balances. The Constitution set up the checks and balances, and tried to limit centralized power, but the Federal government has become so rich and powerful that corruption is endemic and the checks and balances no longer work. Labor unions started out as a balance against the corporations, particularly the "robber barons" of the 19th century. Now the labor unions are themselves so powerful that they are overrun with corruption, and of course, the same thing is true of corporations.
The one fact we know for sure is that we can't perfect human nature so pure capitalism only works well until monopolies develop. Socialism is doomed to fail because it cuts out that middle step of (working until the monopolies form). Pure Communism is doomed to fail because it's a hopelessly illogical concept unless all people are perfect and equal.
In the case of the U.S. if the power were more spread to the states like it was supposed to be, we would evolve more efficient government because there are 50 simultaneous experiments going on. People could vote with their feet leaving poorly-run states for well-run states. They can do that now, but it makes a lot less difference. Then the poorly-run states can say, "Gee whiz, we need fix ourselves or everyone will leave." With the Federal government having the vast bulk of the power they can say, "Gee whiz, people don't like us. Oh, well, what are they going to do, move to France? HA HA HA HA! Pass me the champagne."
I can absolutely promise you I would never work for Microsoft. I've worked for big companies and small companies and medium-sized companies. For me, so I'm not claiming this is true for everyone, big companies were always horrible to work for. In my experience, (same disclaimer), small companies are always much better than big companies, even though all small companies certainly aren't good places to work. In my experience medium companies can go either way. I've worked for good ones (like my current employer, among others) and I've worked for bad ones (like the place that taught me that "Dilbert" is real).
I can assure you, there is nothing that Microsoft would offer me that would make me want to work for them (nor would they want to). I'm sure there are other people whose principles cannot be sold out for a nice office and free soda pop. Please don't insult us by assuming we would all cave for the many benefits a company like Microsoft can provide. If you want to work for MS, that's fine, and if they want you, then it's a win-win, but not all of us think that way.
Office is even a stronger monopoly than Windows itself, if such a thing is possible. And the worst part is that Office (particularly Word and Access, and any of the apps once you start doing any VBA) is just plain horrible. The only reason anyone uses it is because of one of the two following things: 1. It's all they can use. 2. It's all they know how to use.
I can't imagine there's anyone with any real software experience who actually thinks Office is good. OOo is better, although it's hardly great. Of course, when it comes to word processing, I think the whole paradigm has completely failed. IMO, if you're not doing DTP, you should be using markup. Of course, that will never happen for 99.9% of users, even though it would be several orders easier and more efficient. Just think of all the billions of dollars of productivity going down the sinkhole of using Word. It boggles the mind.
Although my evidence is anecdotal, I've sometime noticed a greater tendency to put inappropriate apostrophes on words to make them plural when the word ends with a vowel.
I'm sure some linguist or psychologist could come up with a theory for it. Although there seems to be a huge increase in people using apostrophes in plurals, I, who feel I would never make that mistake, have on occasion done it before I caught myself in the heat of typing some nugget of profundity on /. or wherever. It's like using the wrong "their" (or "they're" or "there")... sometimes our fingers get ahead of our brains (or vice versa). So while some (probably most) of it is people being ignorant of the language, I'm convinced that a lot of it is a natural tendency for brain farts with respect to this particular feature (and other similar ones) of the language.
Now checking for stupid typos... Oh, look, I was spared of the humiliation of making a stupid typo while complaining about stupid typos. Now that I said that, I'm paranoid.
I know I'm not in the planetary science loop, but I always thought that was the main theory of Saturn's rings.
The problem is that they're getting to the point where software lock-in, strong-arming OEMs, making vague unspecific threats about patents and generally acting like a street thug isn't going to work.
If everyone is using an iPhone or an Android device, what's Microsoft going to do, hire people to break their phones? Wait, they might just...
They've been coasting on Windows and Office for 20 years, but that ride is almost done. They'll have to compete for real now, and it will be pretty amusing to watch, since they have clearly forgotten how to do it.
California comes close... except for the language.
I avoid the self-checkout machines for the same reason. They are a very poorly-designed mishmash of existing hardware items, cobbled haphazardly together using a system that requires manual intervention from an employee if you so much as breathe wrong.
The other day, the employee suggested I use the self-checkout for a fairly large order because the only cashiers had lines, which was a disaster. Basically she had to stand at her console, overriding the machine every couple of items because I had too many groceries to fit in the bagging area, and one of my kids was moving them to the cart as I filled each bag. Of course, the machine threw conniptions every time we so much as touched something in the bagging area. In the end, it probably would have been faster, and definitely would have been much less hassle to wait in line.
You aren't. What's worse is the goofy video they posted by way of explanation.
Hey, GOG.com, for those of us who don't want to wade through a 4-minute video with a low signal-to-noise ratio (or maybe non-existent, I didn't watch after a few seconds), why not simply describe what you have to say?
If someone wants to watch, that's fine, but don't force people to slog through it if all they want to know is what you're doing. I had to use Google to find out what you should have spelled out on your web page. This news story explained that the site's been rewritten but the service will remain basically the same.
So, I've really liked GOG over the past year or so, buying over a dozen games from them, and will probably continue to do business with them, but this stupid stunt is horrible marketing that has alienated and annoyed the very people they are trying to target... paying customers.
I hope her patent has expired or Airbus is going to face some legal problems. Or maybe they licensed it... she has been carrying a couple extra golden lassos.
They didn't have games quite that old. Mostly they were from the mid 90s and onward. The value they provide is enormous. Not only do you get a version of the old game tweaked to run on modern versions of Windows (not to mention the DOSBox games automatically run on Linux and WINE handles most or all of the rest), but you also get PDFs of the manuals and other goodies like soundtracks and game art.
As far as M.U.L.E. goes, there's a project to reimplement the game for modern systems called "Planet M.U.L.E.". I never played the original, but the new version is very good, and they are looking at expanding the game with new optional features that the original never had.
...be sure not to buy any blu-ray player, game console or TV with an HDMI connector.
Sarcasm detectors, on the other hand, are not covered by this.
I'll see that and raise you a, "I've bought games from GOG.com I _already_ own for the convenience of getting rid of crippling DRM (e.g., so I can run them without optical media) and for the convenience of having them already configured to run on modern versions of Windows.
Making this move with absolutely no warning whatsoever is grossly unprofessional. I have a purchase I still need to download. Even if GOG.com comes back, how can we ever trust them not to simply pull the plug again?
It seems that no one is interested in selling what people want to buy. It's no wonder piracy is so rampant. It's the only way to get decent value. When the pirated product is inherently worth much more than what you pay for, something is seriously wrong with the whole industry (software, movies, music, etc).
And the cost of creating content is negligible, as Jamendo is proof of.
There is a lot of cool stuff on Jamendo, but I know those artists put a lot of time, effort and investment of equipment into their work. It may be negligible for creating some kinds of music, but for most music, movies, software, and any other content, this is simply not so. Also you're making the same mistake a lot of businesses and all of the government make: That people's time has little or no value. And frankly, at least for the kind of music I enjoy, I would not expect to find much worthwhile content created by people who don't have a huge amount of experience... years or even decades. That's not only a tremendous financial investment (or I should say risk, since "starving artist" is a common term for a good reason), but a tremendous investment in energy as well. Real art is not cheap.
If I, as a software developer, were to take off three months to write a book, something I would dearly love to do, you're talking tens of thousands of dollars of cost. Would I have a reasonable expectation of recouping that in sales, assuming I could even take an extended unpaid leave from my job which is probably not possible? Not without prior experience in publishing, and even then, I would never bet on it.
I've also composed, recorded and produced music in the past and it's very time-consuming to do it right, and time (as well as energy) is not something I have a lot of, so the cost would be prohibitive to me to do anything of any amount of ambition.
So I would not consider the cost of creating anything to be negligible and I fully sympathize with, and support, content creators wanting their due remuneration.
The cost of content might be negligible for a large company but for the individuals who actually do the work, the cost is enormous, and individuals, or small groups of them, are who we care about because that's where real innovation and creativity come from.
The plus side is that Exchange's web access is not slower than using Outlook.
The minus side is that Outlook is so absurdly slow that's not saying much.
You're right. My reaction to this was, "This is news?"
They've had this at our local elementary school as long as I've had kids there, which has been 10 years. The kids each have an ID number they enter when they purchase lunch and we write checks for lunch money. They get to keep the same ID number all through their school "career" (my oldest is in 11th grade) and it saves them the trouble of having to deal with money for lunches and saves us the trouble of dealing with it too.
Sure, because no one who draws attention to himself could possibly have skeletons in his closet waiting to be exposed.
It's equally plausible that this guy has had a long history of this kind of behavior and it's just now catching up with him.
Believe it or not, not everything is a conspiracy and it's quite possible the guy abuses women. If the U.S. Government were really out to get him, there are probably much more effective ways to take him out of the picture than allegations that he behaves badly on dates*.
* Not meant to minimize the crime of rape, which is horrible.
Maybe he's being framed, but to assume it is so is just as naive as to assume it's not.