What is more interesting than whether Nader cost Gore the election, or whether the U.S. is headed to hell in a handbasket as our fuzzy foreigner friends seem to agree on, is how this affects the Microsoft ruling.
I'm torn. I agree with Judge Jackson's findings of fact. But I don't trust the gov't to make things right and rosy.
With Bush president elect we are probably heading for an amicable solution. That is, the gov't won't be delegated to solve all MS problems, yet Microsoft will still have to change their ways.
I guess I just figure we'll beat Microsoft even if the fight isn't fair. And if not us, some game console will.
p.s. No disrespect to non-U.S. residents, but I'm allways rather reassured when you dislike our choices.
In any event, Mozilla nightlies are just as good by now; that the Mozilla crew has developed a
cross-platform, standards-compliant, feature-filled, modern web browser in about 2.5 years from the ground up is just amazing.
Amazing? Back when the project started, the goal was to release 5.0 in under six months. Even removing the first year working on the old code base, it's still very late. And as much as I'd like to use something not 4.7X, mozilla's unresponsive nature, slow loading time, cookie problems (in the widget), size, and unreliability still keep me from switching over full time.
What I would really like to see is Slashdot readers and authors committing some patches instead of fencesitting and whining. You
can't consider yourselves to be part of the free software community if you don't commit code
You're not being fair here. The two projects utilizing blizzard's gtkembed widget (part of Mozilla), the galeon and skipstone browsers, have gotten plenty of support in the form of patches, translations, and testing. I don't know for sure why they didn't contribute to Mozilla. Maybe they did and nobody noticed. Maybe they didn't feel that their contribution would make a difference. The point is they were always willing.
...and it's even Gnome-ified so that it fits in well
with your Gnome desktop (although it works fine without Gnome).
It actually requires gnome, libglade, and libxml. It won't run without a whole mess of gnome libraries. Not such a bad thing though, since it speeds development.
If you want a computer, stay away from Gateway. Unless you really enjoy dealing with clueless idiots all the time. Of course,
you're reading slashdot, so that could be the case.
I bought my PC from Gateway three years ago. So the experience for a new buyer might be different. But my experience dealing with sales and service were great. They had it shipped to a friend in WI to avoid the sales tax in MN. They made me a damn-near custom machine with a SCSI hd, SCSI CD, low-end processor, and no monitor for no added cost. They upgraded a graphics card that didn't have a Linux driver available and paid ME since the price of the system had gone down (my sales guy alerted me to this). They replaced the CD three times until I got one that worked. And they replaced my hd by sending me a new one overnight. They did everything I asked and more.
The hardware failures were just bad luck and I don't blame Gateway. And even though it took some time on the phone, they allways came through. And they weren't fazed by my having Linux installed (remember that was three years ago).
I'll buy there again, which is about as much praise as you can give to an OEM.
There's always a few biased posts that completely
praise the named product. In this case, mozilla.
I think this is really a Mozilla-only phenomenom. I'd say the ratio of pro/con is greater for this project than any other.
As for speed, if you read some of the old chats at MozillaZine, especially Mike Shaver's, you'll find that Mozilla will never be faster than Netscape 4.7. As Shaver himself said
when it comes down to how many CPU cycles are needed to display a given page, I don't think we can _ever_ get
faster than 4.x
So except for things like tables, that were a mess in Netscape, everything will render a little slower, with perhaps the perception of rendering a little faster.
And as for stability, I've run both Moz and Galeon (using the embedded moz gtk widget) on a P133 and they are about 5X more unstable than Netscape overall.
It kind of goes back to the theory that open source programmers are scratching their own itch when they
contribute to a project.
Forget the ESR theory, what open source does great is fix bugs in software that we use. If more people used Mozilla as their daily browser, those bugs would get fixed. But, at least in my case (using Galeon too), it's just not stable enough to keep me from using Netscape 4.7X for the majority of my browsing.
It seems pretty clear to me that this company is all about collecting personal information about you.
Funny, but it seems that they are trying to do on a larger scale exactly what the Nielson folks do.
My parents have been scanning things for Nielson for years. They have a nifty scanner that they use to scan purchases, mostly groceries, that are then sent to Nielson by using a cradle-like device attached to the scanner held up to the phone. They then get points that can be used to get gifts from a catalogue.
Thing is, I don't see how the data that CueCat gets would be of any use. The Nielson scanner has an entire keyboard attached that is used to classify stuff scanned and knows of all large stores in the area. CueCat seems to think they can produce solid data from noise. Good luck (not!)
It disappeared for a while after his death, but Gary Wright, co-author from TCP/IP Vol II, put Steven's old home page back up. It's a treasure chest of cool info. The FAQ is good reading if you've read any of his books.
Gary still keeps the Stevens spirit alive too
P.S. The site is still running on a BSDI machine and I used vi to update the pages.:-)
It would be nice to see a highly respected author take over the series from Mr. Stevens and coninue pumping out
new editions - these texts are too important not to be updated.
I think the only text that really is dated is Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment. And since it focuses primarily on POSIX and common functionality among BSD/SYSV systems, it is still a very useful book. Also, some of the dated material on IPC is available in updated form in the UNP Volume II that was released before Steven's death (Which might help explain why Stevens didn't bother re-writing APUE).
As for his other books, the TCP/IP series, from what I know (I actually just started reading it), is only a little dated since IPV6 hadn't been decided yet (though it is fully covered in UNP 2nd edition).
And, as I said, the Unix Network Programming 2nd edition, volumes I and II were rewritten (written) in 1998 and are safely current for a good long time.
People who say that Java is slow are correct, for the most part. Even with the best JVM, Java cannot
approach the speeds of a well-designed native-code application.
You forget that Java can be compiled too. Just look at GCJ
Java is really three things. JWZ has a nice paper about this. It's a language, virtual machine, and class library.
The JVM indeed slows things down, and the class library does some too. But Java the language, even when natively compiled, is slow all by itself.
After all, the GCJ project uses the gcc/g++ compiler code base. So why is a C++ application compiled with g++ so much faster than a gcj compiled application? Must be the use of exceptions and GC (in the form of a shared library with gcj).
So Java isn't slow, exceptions handling and garbage collection are slow.
Re:Guinness didn't want to be remembered for Obi W
on
Sir Alec Guinness Dies
·
· Score: 2
Guinness did so much more than just Obi Wan. Please, let's remember him the way he deserves --
and would have wanted -- to be remembered.
Rubbish. He was an actor, not a critic. I assume he gave the role of Obi Wan his best effort. And he did a damn fine job.
I was a very young kid when Star Wars came out. There was a lot to love about the movie. Special effects, Darth Vader, Han Solo. That's to be expected. But even at that age I knew that Obi Wan made that movie work.
I also liked Alec in Bride Over the River Kwai. Fine movie. But I'm not going to remember him as Colonel whatshisname.
If the Mozilla project had put out a useable browser as quickly as possible, perhaps with some sexy features (I'd settle for just being able to search with the / key, without dialog boxes popping up--but I digress). Then the project might still have succeded.
What open source is great at is fixing bugs. Throw a lot of knowledgable users at a project and they'll twist the code in ways unimaginged by the developers. As a bonus they'll also write up bug reports and send in patches.
But Mozilla hasn't had daily users for most of its lifetime. It's been without talent and without friends. That's why it's limping along.
I want a browser which is text only, and is good at displaying text. (Unlike lynx, which is only sort-of-good).
I agree.
For the record, I use Netscape with everything turned off (images, plugins, Java, Javascript, blah blah) but I feel it's an overkill. Where do I find a decent text-mode browser?
I'd still like Javascript (for things like Yahoo Mail),Java (but not the AWT) and maybe even images rendered via aalib (ascii graphics;-).
Basically what I'd like to see is a Lynx that understand Javascript and handles frames. I've discussed this with the developers at Mozilla on #mozilla, but nobody has done any work yet.
With things like Palms, cell phones, and libraries with VT100's, there is certainly a market for it. But it's not obvious how hard it is to do. Not trivial I'd guess since nobody has tried.
All that is stupid. People don't give a damn if the widgets on different platforms looks the same, because people tend to use one platform, and are used to THOSE widgets.
The reason they designed their own widget set was to increase the amount of cross platform code. One of the smarter moves they've made.
I think they did too much from scratch, used too many untested ideas. They probably lost a good deal of time creating the widget set, but it was either that or spend the same amount of time fixing bugs for all the different widget sets. Easy choice.
so when things are more stable maybe they'll make a build of mozilla that is meant for embedding w/o all the other files that are for mozilla's other features.
They won't be able to since they've licensed their code GPL. Mozilla is NPL.
PETA is a joke, they are a bunch of irresponsible, childish hate-mongers who tolerate no other view than their own.
The worst thing about PETA is that they divert money away from organizations that actually help animals. They are an Animal Rights group, which means that they spend their money on lawyers and publications to push their radical cause.
They aren't an Animal Welfare group. Their idea of ethical treatment of animals is to ignore them and debate the issue.
Just make a browser that works and is fast guys.. leave the e-mail/chat/news/widget stuff for an addon or something.
I would also add one that uses little memory.
What about reviving the Mozilla Classic code base? At the time that Classic was mothballed (10/26/98 to be exact:), it was reliable, used comparatively little memory, and did some cool rendering tricks (the Mariner layout engine rendered text immediately, then images, resizing as it went--cool to watch).
Most people will scoff at using a Motif GUI. But Lesstif is a solid implementation of Motif 1.2 these days, so much so that it's actually BINARY compatible with Motif. So you needn't buy a Motif library.
Other people will say the code is crap. I've been working it for the past week, patching it to compile with current gcc, and I don't think that's accurate. The front end code is solid. And some of the iffy might be expendable. And like I said, it doesn't crash.
I'm pragmatic. I was willing to take a backseat and wait for Mozilla to finish. But without predicting the future it seems clear now that Mozilla at the very least won't be viable on older systems, especially old laptops that are difficult to upgrade. A browser is too important these days. Those folks deserve a browser that is still being developed, still having bugs fixed.
Just be thankful you have SDRAM and not an old machine with EDO (or fast page). The prices are double, and they go in machines that are worthless. Oh, the irony.
So, what is it with this? Whence the instinctive assumption that people who aren't "into" computers can't possibly understand their implications? Can non-drummers appreciate good music?
Thanks! nicely put. I think because math, csci, and programming in general are such rigid disciplines, people less knowledgable of them are at a great disadvantage. A writer might find my grammer and writing style crappalicious, but it's pretty hard to prove it.
In fact, most people who don't know how to use computers are about as smart as the people who do know how to use computers.
Yeah, and I've never understood why there is a perception that they're not. It might go back to the fact that it's hard to prove it. But people who are gifted at art or whatever are no less intelligent as a whole--just misguided:)
The installation procedure is horrible, but it is manageble.
It's strange, but this almost makes me want to run the damn thing. I started with Linux at Red Hat v3.0.3 (about three years back), and the installation was already pretty solid at that point. But I've heard all the hairy tales of installation in the pre v1.0 days. I guess it resonates with me the same way camping does.
The previous poster mentioned that it was/.ed, but you can still read it off the cache at Google.
It has support for most Matrox cards, including my MGA. So I'm going to give it a try. Other than Matrox, they only have support for the S3 Virge and Vesa2.0--bummer. At least they will be able to profit from the release of specs for X, so the going won't be quite as hard as Linux.
Ok, so it's 50K. Now I'm wondering just how Red Hat determines how much to give. I mean, is there some kind of function key on an HP that you can use to calculate how much to donate? I thought this was the kind of thing that would show up in Edgar for filings to the SEC, but I don't see expenditures for charitable contributions or the like.
The Newton isn't the only promissing thing they've orphaned.
What was the name of that ruggedized mini-laptop that Apple released? It had a weird contoured screen and was smaller than a laptop but larger than a Win-CE device. Supposedly, it was aimed for sale to schools. I saw a kid with one on a bus and thought it was the coolest looking thing.
Anyway, I guess my point is that Apple is famous for innovations they let wither and die.
When he talks about the Gimp copying Photoshop but not crediting Adobe engineers for the original work in designing it, I had to laugh.
This absence, unfortunately typical, represents a grave ethical lapse. That the Adobe developers must have been paid for the efforts does not relieve the need to acknowledge their contribution. They invented a brilliant design and worked hard to implement it. The authors of GIMP were undoubtedly generous to the rest of the world by imitating that invention and making the result available to others; but they could not have done it without the anterior contribution of the Photoshop team.
Since you mentioned anterior contributions, may I add that your paper is more of the posterior variety?
A grave ethical lapse?
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Ever heard that quote before Bertrand?
Hey Adobe engineers! I'm copying your work, which is obvious. Because it's good; which makes sense because why else would I copy it? So thanks!
Slashdot Mirror
What is more interesting than whether Nader cost Gore the election, or whether the U.S. is headed to hell in a handbasket as our fuzzy foreigner friends seem to agree on, is how this affects the Microsoft ruling.
I'm torn. I agree with Judge Jackson's findings of fact. But I don't trust the gov't to make things right and rosy.
With Bush president elect we are probably heading for an amicable solution. That is, the gov't won't be delegated to solve all MS problems, yet Microsoft will still have to change their ways.
I guess I just figure we'll beat Microsoft even if the fight isn't fair. And if not us, some game console will.
p.s. No disrespect to non-U.S. residents, but I'm allways rather reassured when you dislike our choices.
Amazing? Back when the project started, the goal was to release 5.0 in under six months. Even removing the first year working on the old code base, it's still very late. And as much as I'd like to use something not 4.7X, mozilla's unresponsive nature, slow loading time, cookie problems (in the widget), size, and unreliability still keep me from switching over full time.
You're not being fair here. The two projects utilizing blizzard's gtkembed widget (part of Mozilla), the galeon and skipstone browsers, have gotten plenty of support in the form of patches, translations, and testing. I don't know for sure why they didn't contribute to Mozilla. Maybe they did and nobody noticed. Maybe they didn't feel that their contribution would make a difference. The point is they were always willing.
A good start might be to stop linking any c't articles not translated into english from /. They might miss the traffic.
It actually requires gnome, libglade, and libxml. It won't run without a whole mess of gnome libraries. Not such a bad thing though, since it speeds development.
I bought my PC from Gateway three years ago. So the experience for a new buyer might be different. But my experience dealing with sales and service were great. They had it shipped to a friend in WI to avoid the sales tax in MN. They made me a damn-near custom machine with a SCSI hd, SCSI CD, low-end processor, and no monitor for no added cost. They upgraded a graphics card that didn't have a Linux driver available and paid ME since the price of the system had gone down (my sales guy alerted me to this). They replaced the CD three times until I got one that worked. And they replaced my hd by sending me a new one overnight. They did everything I asked and more.
The hardware failures were just bad luck and I don't blame Gateway. And even though it took some time on the phone, they allways came through. And they weren't fazed by my having Linux installed (remember that was three years ago).
I'll buy there again, which is about as much praise as you can give to an OEM.
I think this is really a Mozilla-only phenomenom. I'd say the ratio of pro/con is greater for this project than any other.
As for speed, if you read some of the old chats at MozillaZine, especially Mike Shaver's, you'll find that Mozilla will never be faster than Netscape 4.7. As Shaver himself said
So except for things like tables, that were a mess in Netscape, everything will render a little slower, with perhaps the perception of rendering a little faster.And as for stability, I've run both Moz and Galeon (using the embedded moz gtk widget) on a P133 and they are about 5X more unstable than Netscape overall.
Forget the ESR theory, what open source does great is fix bugs in software that we use. If more people used Mozilla as their daily browser, those bugs would get fixed. But, at least in my case (using Galeon too), it's just not stable enough to keep me from using Netscape 4.7X for the majority of my browsing.
Funny, but it seems that they are trying to do on a larger scale exactly what the Nielson folks do.
My parents have been scanning things for Nielson for years. They have a nifty scanner that they use to scan purchases, mostly groceries, that are then sent to Nielson by using a cradle-like device attached to the scanner held up to the phone. They then get points that can be used to get gifts from a catalogue.
Thing is, I don't see how the data that CueCat gets would be of any use. The Nielson scanner has an entire keyboard attached that is used to classify stuff scanned and knows of all large stores in the area. CueCat seems to think they can produce solid data from noise. Good luck (not!)
It disappeared for a while after his death, but Gary Wright, co-author from TCP/IP Vol II, put Steven's old home page back up. It's a treasure chest of cool info. The FAQ is good reading if you've read any of his books.
Gary still keeps the Stevens spirit alive too
I think the only text that really is dated is Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment. And since it focuses primarily on POSIX and common functionality among BSD/SYSV systems, it is still a very useful book. Also, some of the dated material on IPC is available in updated form in the UNP Volume II that was released before Steven's death (Which might help explain why Stevens didn't bother re-writing APUE).
As for his other books, the TCP/IP series, from what I know (I actually just started reading it), is only a little dated since IPV6 hadn't been decided yet (though it is fully covered in UNP 2nd edition).
And, as I said, the Unix Network Programming 2nd edition, volumes I and II were rewritten (written) in 1998 and are safely current for a good long time.
You forget that Java can be compiled too. Just look at GCJ
Java is really three things. JWZ has a nice paper about this. It's a language, virtual machine, and class library.
The JVM indeed slows things down, and the class library does some too. But Java the language, even when natively compiled, is slow all by itself.
After all, the GCJ project uses the gcc/g++ compiler code base. So why is a C++ application compiled with g++ so much faster than a gcj compiled application? Must be the use of exceptions and GC (in the form of a shared library with gcj).
So Java isn't slow, exceptions handling and garbage collection are slow.
Rubbish. He was an actor, not a critic. I assume he gave the role of Obi Wan his best effort. And he did a damn fine job.
I was a very young kid when Star Wars came out. There was a lot to love about the movie. Special effects, Darth Vader, Han Solo. That's to be expected. But even at that age I knew that Obi Wan made that movie work.
I also liked Alec in Bride Over the River Kwai. Fine movie. But I'm not going to remember him as Colonel whatshisname.
RIP Alec.
The Suck article misses the mark. I think the reason that Mozilla has limped along is that there aren't enough talented programmers working on it.
JWZ said as much in his resignation.
If the Mozilla project had put out a useable browser as quickly as possible, perhaps with some sexy features (I'd settle for just being able to search with the / key, without dialog boxes popping up--but I digress). Then the project might still have succeded.
What open source is great at is fixing bugs. Throw a lot of knowledgable users at a project and they'll twist the code in ways unimaginged by the developers. As a bonus they'll also write up bug reports and send in patches.
But Mozilla hasn't had daily users for most of its lifetime. It's been without talent and without friends. That's why it's limping along.
I agree.
I'd still like Javascript (for things like Yahoo Mail) ,Java (but not the AWT) and maybe even images rendered via aalib (ascii graphics;-).
Basically what I'd like to see is a Lynx that understand Javascript and handles frames. I've discussed this with the developers at Mozilla on #mozilla, but nobody has done any work yet.
With things like Palms, cell phones, and libraries with VT100's, there is certainly a market for it. But it's not obvious how hard it is to do. Not trivial I'd guess since nobody has tried.
The reason they designed their own widget set was to increase the amount of cross platform code. One of the smarter moves they've made.
I think they did too much from scratch, used too many untested ideas. They probably lost a good deal of time creating the widget set, but it was either that or spend the same amount of time fixing bugs for all the different widget sets. Easy choice.
They won't be able to since they've licensed their code GPL. Mozilla is NPL.
The worst thing about PETA is that they divert money away from organizations that actually help animals. They are an Animal Rights group, which means that they spend their money on lawyers and publications to push their radical cause.
They aren't an Animal Welfare group. Their idea of ethical treatment of animals is to ignore them and debate the issue.
I would also add one that uses little memory.
What about reviving the Mozilla Classic code base? At the time that Classic was mothballed (10/26/98 to be exact:), it was reliable, used comparatively little memory, and did some cool rendering tricks (the Mariner layout engine rendered text immediately, then images, resizing as it went--cool to watch).
Most people will scoff at using a Motif GUI. But Lesstif is a solid implementation of Motif 1.2 these days, so much so that it's actually BINARY compatible with Motif. So you needn't buy a Motif library.
Other people will say the code is crap. I've been working it for the past week, patching it to compile with current gcc, and I don't think that's accurate. The front end code is solid. And some of the iffy might be expendable. And like I said, it doesn't crash.
I'm pragmatic. I was willing to take a backseat and wait for Mozilla to finish. But without predicting the future it seems clear now that Mozilla at the very least won't be viable on older systems, especially old laptops that are difficult to upgrade. A browser is too important these days. Those folks deserve a browser that is still being developed, still having bugs fixed.
What do you think people?
Just be thankful you have SDRAM and not an old machine with EDO (or fast page). The prices are double, and they go in machines that are worthless. Oh, the irony.
Thanks! nicely put. I think because math, csci, and programming in general are such rigid disciplines, people less knowledgable of them are at a great disadvantage. A writer might find my grammer and writing style crappalicious, but it's pretty hard to prove it.
Yeah, and I've never understood why there is a perception that they're not. It might go back to the fact that it's hard to prove it. But people who are gifted at art or whatever are no less intelligent as a whole--just misguided:)
It's strange, but this almost makes me want to run the damn thing. I started with Linux at Red Hat v3.0.3 (about three years back), and the installation was already pretty solid at that point. But I've heard all the hairy tales of installation in the pre v1.0 days. I guess it resonates with me the same way camping does.
The previous poster mentioned that it was /.ed, but you can still read it off the cache at Google.
It has support for most Matrox cards, including my MGA. So I'm going to give it a try. Other than Matrox, they only have support for the S3 Virge and Vesa2.0--bummer. At least they will be able to profit from the release of specs for X, so the going won't be quite as hard as Linux.
Ok, so it's 50K. Now I'm wondering just how Red Hat determines how much to give. I mean, is there some kind of function key on an HP that you can use to calculate how much to donate? I thought this was the kind of thing that would show up in Edgar for filings to the SEC, but I don't see expenditures for charitable contributions or the like.
The Newton isn't the only promissing thing they've orphaned.
What was the name of that ruggedized mini-laptop that Apple released? It had a weird contoured screen and was smaller than a laptop but larger than a Win-CE device. Supposedly, it was aimed for sale to schools. I saw a kid with one on a bus and thought it was the coolest looking thing.
Anyway, I guess my point is that Apple is famous for innovations they let wither and die.
When he talks about the Gimp copying Photoshop but not crediting Adobe engineers for the original work in designing it, I had to laugh.
Since you mentioned anterior contributions, may I add that your paper is more of the posterior variety?
A grave ethical lapse?
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Ever heard that quote before Bertrand?
Hey Adobe engineers! I'm copying your work, which is obvious. Because it's good; which makes sense because why else would I copy it? So thanks!