Looking at the bug page of bug #182500 on bugzilla.mozilla.org (sorry, direct links blocked from slashdot), the list of associated bugs has 32 entries, and is a result of an incorrect backout of way too much code at some point just before the 1.2 release.
Somebody closer to the mozilla project could surely give more detailed / accurate info on this though.
...if the language is forgotten when the rock itself is found.
Obviously, it is overly simplistic to assume that you, as long as the physical medium is durable enough, your data will be preserved forever. Look at the difficulties we have interpreting the Rosetta stone, the hieroglyphs, etc today! The data IS there, but what use is it if nobody really understands it? Yes, lots of progress has been made in understanding them - but still, look at the difficulties.
The laserdisc was "decoded" with emulation. Any proposals on how to emulate ancient Egypt?:-)
I use Mozilla on WinXP, Win2k (and Linux) on Intel and AMD machines ranging from 333 MHz to 1.8 GHz, and I have to disagree with you on the stability issue.
I keep sticking to the "final" releases (1.0, 1.1 etc) and since somewhere around the release of 1.0 or 1.1 I don't think it has crashed on me even once.
The only thing keeping me from completely forgetting about IE is the fact that some sites still do not follow the standards (certain banks for instance). But when it comes to speed, stability, features and configurability, I (finally!) find Mozilla to be at least as good as IE, if not better.
Ah, this reminds me of the Old Days, hacking Turbo C on my father's 286! At that time TSR (Terminate Stay Resident) applications whas the latest and greatest in "multitasking" on desktop computers. The most notable TSR application was Borland's Sidekick, a calendar application you switched to and from it with some (long forgotten) hot-key combination. I used it happily.
What is being done here with ratfish (and screen for that matter) is just the same, just with more processes and the added possibility of graphic applications;-)
Oh, of course, there is a certain difference in operating systems too, now that I think of it...
It's a matter of game theory: if you as a record company stop giving the record companies payola, none of yor songs will get played, and your competitors' will. Kind of like the prisoners dilemma, If all the record companies stopped shelling out payola they would all be better off. But if one does it it has an advantage.
On the other hand, if this behavior pattern is disadvantageous to the collective, the collective might change pattern.
So far, the record companies have indeed benefited from the pattern, but that could well change, in particular if they draw too much badwill upon themselves. Which is why I am constantly surprised by their arrogant (or ignorant?) attitude towards online music listeners, a.k.a. their customers.
Using GPL software means submitting the changes
on
Abusing the GPL?
·
· Score: 1
Isn't youd company obliged (under the GPL license) to publish any modifications they make, under the GPL license? That would have interesting implications on their plans.
This sphere will certainly work well for navigation in large, open virtual worlds and I would love to try it out.
Now what happens when the user runs into a wall and the VR renderer supposedly stops moving his avatar? The "correct" thing would be for the sphere to stop rotating in that direction, which would require some active external control of its movements. It is a difficult problem, considering the size of the installation, and it would be interesting to know whether they plan to do any research on that in the future.
"You could just see Hollywood jump on this kind of story to make the next doom-gloom movie"
They already have. Maybe now we can see that rampant mold from X-files come true! I don't remember which episode it was, but I especially recall a horrible scene with a phone box filled with fungus, and a man somewhere in the middle...;)
Or like saying "Linux runs on Intel", and "Windows runs on Intel", so that implies "Linux runs on Windows". Except that's actually sort of true, since there is VMWare...
To really confuse things, now you can (theoretically) get MS Office on MacOS X by running it under Wine under X under MacOS X. An interesting alternative to simply running the native Mac version of Office. To confuse things even more, just add SoftWindows and VMWare somewhere in the above chain.:-)
Sadly, I think there is a grain of truth in what the author claims, but I would like to put it slightly differently:
I believe the constant "drive towards ease" is something we have to live with. They days when "computer literate" and "computer user" where close to synonyms are long gone. Today, almost everyone (in the industrialized world) has become a computer user. And it turns out that not even a recognizable set of user interface metaphors (such as the desktop metaphor that died with the Macintosh) is "easy" enough: There is still a learning curve, in a time when the learning curve is expected to be zero.
We live in the "wizard age"! The bewildered user is protected (from a poorly designed user interface) by a flood of wizard dialogues, falsely disguising any operation as "simple": Just click on the "Next" button until it disappears. In the end, the user has no clue as to what really happened - magically a mail account, Internet connection, or God knows what was set up. When something stops working, the wizard is gone and the user is left with only one option to bring him back: Reinstall.
Now, if all you want to do is use the machine, this inconsistent plethora of click-through interfaces is all you will ever see. And the sad thing is that the superficial computer knowledge you gain in this process apparently is sufficient for a vast majority of users, just look at what is really widespread out there.
Long live the idea of consistent GUI:s based on thoroughly designed elements! But the digital world of the masses doesn't want them and apparently doesn't need them.
Or maybe I'm just temporarily disillusioned. Someone please tell me there is hope.
What if you could reverse this effect, creating virtual microphones with a focused array of microphones. Today you can buy simple array microphones intended for desktop use (from Labtec, for instance), but imagine if you really could have "spotlight" microphones of the same accuracy as these speakers...
Probably not - think of the memory required for a frame buffer to support a 1440 dpi monitor.
And on the hardware side, the data transfer rate required to achieve a decent frame rate on, say, a 19" 1440 dpi display must be quite high (too tired to do any calculation on it:)
A voice-controlled application with a limited context can indeed be made both speaker- and dialect-independent (within reasonable limits of course) and also without the need of lengthy training sessions. The problems you refer to typically occur when a system has to be able to do very hard things, such as taking dictation of arbitrary sentences with very large vocabularies into a word processor.
This is a common misunderstanding, probably because most commercially available voice-controlled applications today are dictation systems, quite different from what seems to be imagined in the Star Trek case.
According to Inktomi, the web today is about 1 billion pages. I haven't found any estimate of how much data there is in gigabytes (somebody knows any?), but if you just limit yourself to the textual data, there should be more than enough room on one disc to backup the entire "hypertext part" of the web (and maybe some graphics too:-)
But then again, when (if at all) this becomes available, the Web has probably grown way beyond that... Oh well.
Another good reference is this page at Search Engine Watch.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you would have to wait until the broad-band disturbances caused by the mushroom cloud clear up. Assuming, of course, that you survive that long.
Was the fix that involved?
:-)
To my (faint) understanding: Maybe
Looking at the bug page of bug #182500 on bugzilla.mozilla.org (sorry, direct links blocked from slashdot), the list of associated bugs has 32 entries, and is a result of an incorrect backout of way too much code at some point just before the 1.2 release.
Somebody closer to the mozilla project could surely give more detailed / accurate info on this though.
...if the language is forgotten when the rock itself is found.
:-)
Obviously, it is overly simplistic to assume that you, as long as the physical medium is durable enough, your data will be preserved forever. Look at the difficulties we have interpreting the Rosetta stone, the hieroglyphs, etc today! The data IS there, but what use is it if nobody really understands it? Yes, lots of progress has been made in understanding them - but still, look at the difficulties.
The laserdisc was "decoded" with emulation. Any proposals on how to emulate ancient Egypt?
I use Mozilla on WinXP, Win2k (and Linux) on Intel and AMD machines ranging from 333 MHz to 1.8 GHz, and I have to disagree with you on the stability issue.
I keep sticking to the "final" releases (1.0, 1.1 etc) and since somewhere around the release of 1.0 or 1.1 I don't think it has crashed on me even once.
The only thing keeping me from completely forgetting about IE is the fact that some sites still do not follow the standards (certain banks for instance). But when it comes to speed, stability, features and configurability, I (finally!) find Mozilla to be at least as good as IE, if not better.
Would be interesting to read more on this study. Any references?
Ah, this reminds me of the Old Days, hacking Turbo C on my father's 286! At that time TSR (Terminate Stay Resident) applications whas the latest and greatest in "multitasking" on desktop computers. The most notable TSR application was Borland's Sidekick, a calendar application you switched to and from it with some (long forgotten) hot-key combination. I used it happily.
;-)
What is being done here with ratfish (and screen for that matter) is just the same, just with more processes and the added possibility of graphic applications
Oh, of course, there is a certain difference in operating systems too, now that I think of it...
Just rambling.
On the other hand, if this behavior pattern is disadvantageous to the collective, the collective might change pattern.
So far, the record companies have indeed benefited from the pattern, but that could well change, in particular if they draw too much badwill upon themselves. Which is why I am constantly surprised by their arrogant (or ignorant?) attitude towards online music listeners, a.k.a. their customers.
Isn't youd company obliged (under the GPL license) to publish any modifications they make, under the GPL license? That would have interesting implications on their plans.
This sphere will certainly work well for navigation in large, open virtual worlds and I would love to try it out.
Now what happens when the user runs into a wall and the VR renderer supposedly stops moving his avatar? The "correct" thing would be for the sphere to stop rotating in that direction, which would require some active external control of its movements. It is a difficult problem, considering the size of the installation, and it would be interesting to know whether they plan to do any research on that in the future.
Hmmm, let's see. Current space assets of mankind:
- A mold-ridden space station
- A handful of local transport space shuttles
- Space cowboys
We're doomed.
"You could just see Hollywood jump on this kind of story to make the next doom-gloom movie"
;)
They already have. Maybe now we can see that rampant mold from X-files come true! I don't remember which episode it was, but I especially recall a horrible scene with a phone box filled with fungus, and a man somewhere in the middle...
Or like saying "Linux runs on Intel", and "Windows runs on Intel", so that implies "Linux runs on Windows". Except that's actually sort of true, since there is VMWare...
:-)
To really confuse things, now you can (theoretically) get MS Office on MacOS X by running it under Wine under X under MacOS X. An interesting alternative to simply running the native Mac version of Office. To confuse things even more, just add SoftWindows and VMWare somewhere in the above chain.
Sadly, I think there is a grain of truth in what the author claims, but I would like to put it slightly differently:
I believe the constant "drive towards ease" is something we have to live with. They days when "computer literate" and "computer user" where close to synonyms are long gone. Today, almost everyone (in the industrialized world) has become a computer user. And it turns out that not even a recognizable set of user interface metaphors (such as the desktop metaphor that died with the Macintosh) is "easy" enough: There is still a learning curve, in a time when the learning curve is expected to be zero.
We live in the "wizard age"! The bewildered user is protected (from a poorly designed user interface) by a flood of wizard dialogues, falsely disguising any operation as "simple": Just click on the "Next" button until it disappears. In the end, the user has no clue as to what really happened - magically a mail account, Internet connection, or God knows what was set up. When something stops working, the wizard is gone and the user is left with only one option to bring him back: Reinstall.
Now, if all you want to do is use the machine, this inconsistent plethora of click-through interfaces is all you will ever see. And the sad thing is that the superficial computer knowledge you gain in this process apparently is sufficient for a vast majority of users, just look at what is really widespread out there.
Long live the idea of consistent GUI:s based on thoroughly designed elements! But the digital world of the masses doesn't want them and apparently doesn't need them.
Or maybe I'm just temporarily disillusioned. Someone please tell me there is hope.
What if you could reverse this effect, creating virtual microphones with a focused array of microphones. Today you can buy simple array microphones intended for desktop use (from Labtec, for instance), but imagine if you really could have "spotlight" microphones of the same accuracy as these speakers...
X probably couldn't handle it though...
:)
Probably not - think of the memory required for a frame buffer to support a 1440 dpi monitor.
And on the hardware side, the data transfer rate required to achieve a decent frame rate on, say, a 19" 1440 dpi display must be quite high (too tired to do any calculation on it
But surely, it's nice technology.
A voice-controlled application with a limited context can indeed be made both speaker- and dialect-independent (within reasonable limits of course) and also without the need of lengthy training sessions. The problems you refer to typically occur when a system has to be able to do very hard things, such as taking dictation of arbitrary sentences with very large vocabularies into a word processor.
This is a common misunderstanding, probably because most commercially available voice-controlled applications today are dictation systems, quite different from what seems to be imagined in the Star Trek case.
But then again, when (if at all) this becomes available, the Web has probably grown way beyond that... Oh well.
Another good reference is this page at Search Engine Watch.
Windows, obviously, is the platform to be "confined to relatively simple applications", since anything else will make it crash ;)
But, as always, if your lies are sufficiently twisted, enough people will believe them...