> since they are not owned by the government they > were lower quality.
Government owned entities have much better funding and resources. At least that was true a few years ago. There was once a time when almost all companies were government owned. So it's not difficult to imagine that the relative newcomers had some catching up to do.
Besides, there are a lot of fishy things going on in smaller private companies, I guess China's the only place where you can find factories using Human hair to brew soysauce, producing milk powder that could kill infants, etc. For government owned entities, at least they provide SOME insurance to the safety of their products.
For jade shops, I'd guess there's a whole bunch of privately owned shops that are selling fake jades. I think that's what the lady meant by 'lower quality'.
> a scant two centuries ago insulting the king could > cost you your head,
And what, a scant two centuries ago slavery was still the norm in the US? (FYI, the slavery system was abolished thousands of years ago in China.)
Different places/cultures have different views, values and thus progress for "freedom", "liberty". For example, you might think that the right to bear arms is a good thing, but for me, I don't see any need for that. And I'm perfectly happy that I don't have worry that a crazy neighbour could blast a hole on me with his shotgun. You live your way, and I live mine. I don't want people asserting their values on me.
Over time, things change, countries change, governments change. Please don't site your facts from a century or half a century ago. Every country has gone through her own horrible times. It's important not to linger onto the past and focus on things happening NOW. Or perhaps you're too indifferent to update your information?
Did I hear Windows 2000? MS has the habit of doing right things the wrong way. An example of a badly implemented idea does NOT necessarily make the whole idea bad. (mod me down or flame me, but I think the Windows registry is an example of such).
The grandparent post (and all others supporting the idea) have a point: Why on earth would you need the inactive getty's in memory? The problem of the Windows implementation is that the algorithm that determines which to swap out and which not is flawed. I have a server for testing and misc. purposes, and users (including me) frequently leave their vnc sessions unattended for days -- Moz, GNOME/KDE and all that stuff. I'd be all for removing the cruft from RAM until days later when the user comes back.
Of course, people like to label things. MS = bad. Windows = crash. Proactive swapping = bad. Registry = bad. etc... But come on, you're using a badly implemented Windows VM system as an argument against a Linux implementation?! IMHO, at least for Linux you can be assured that if the new VM turns out worse than the current one, either it would be kicked out of the main trunk, or you can find an alternate source tree with the old VM. So what's the problem? At least they're willing to try to improve their system for the benefit of all. Experimenting with new things and failing some is inevitable if you want a better system in the long run.
I thought Slashdotters knew better. I guess I must be new here;-p
This is a task from an International programming competition (like a secondary school version of ACM). Unfortunately, I guess I failed as a slashdotter as I scored ZERO (my only zero for all six tasks) for that particular problem. I repent.
Why do you assume that everyone else was "sloppy" and just allocated a big array? If you're going to write a big-int routine it's not that much more difficult to write an arbitrary precision routine than it is to write a "max FOO" precision routine.
In these competition environments with severe time constraints, nobody would write an arbitrary precision routine when an upper limit of FOO is given. Some people do, however, set their "MAX" constant to something much larger than the given, but it is normally assumed that the given "FOO" is correct and the increased "MAX" constant is only to cater for some possible off-by-one or minor overflow errors instead of a problem of the input. After all, not everybody wants to calculate how much space to exactly allocate when some BIGNUM would seem to suffice. *That's* what the grandparent means regarding "sloppy coding".
Of course they should be punished for being a harmful monopoly and abusing their position.
But "abuse of monopoly" doesn't really have a direct link with "insecure software".
What IF Microsoft releases near perfect software (regarding security), are they then entitled to abuse their monopoly?
And what exactly should the charges be? MS is fined for releasing insecure software, because it is a harmful monopoly? Come on. Are you charging them for being a bad monopoly or are you charging them for releasing insecure software? Take one.
Distributions like, for example, RedHat bundles even more software with their many installation CD's (apparently more than MS). To many, they are unncessary, and you can sure bet a large portion of the included softare have security holes. Of course, RedHat doesn't have a history of disregarding court orders to unbundle their software, but still, I'd bet that if one day software companies are charged for releasing buggy software, it wouldn't only be Microsoft (or the monopoly of the time).
The main implication is "Companies could be fined for software bugs!". Sure you could compile a list of conditions on which companies are liable and which not, but I'm sure the list would only shrink over time. And don't forget the horde of lawyers eyeing this new "market" once such a ruling is made.
a) having a monopoly and b) using that monopoly coercively and c) refused to un-bundle extenstions
Existing laws are supposed to handle this situation. According to your logic, once an entity is convicted of doing (a),(b) and (c), it is additionally punished for writing buggy software. So somehow this has an implication that people who write buggy software (or non-100%-bug-free software) are prone to additional charges. Which is what I'm against.
I'd like to draw an analogy:
Imagine a person convicted of theft. Originally he'd have a sentence of 2 years, but since he looks ugly he gets another 1 year and is fined $1000 for smelling like rotten meat.
How about apache? It dominates the web server market. BIND for the DNS market? Or even BSD code in the MS Windows distribution? Of course, they are not monopolists, but AFAIK being a monopolist doesn't mean one has to make sure everything works perfect, while smaller entities could get away with distributing inferior products. So it's not really about being a monopolist rather than marketshare. If you're talking about marketshare, a lot of free software dominates niche markets (like in the above examples), should they be fined too?
Suppose one day Linux achieves world domination, are free software developers obligated to ensure their software is 100% bug-free?
> and has steadfastly refeused to unbundle these bug-infested products
If people use them, they use them. Unbundling it doesn't really make the situation better. Of course, those who do not use the bundled software will be less likely to be hit by these bugs, but for essential software like web browsers, media players, people will install them anyway. Of course, they might install products from other companies, but in general, it doesn't guarantee a more secure system.
> If they really believe that integrated media/internet/mail is part of the OS of the future, then they should ensure that said OS is secure
Nothing is 100% secure. Even OpenBSD has had a few holes in the past (*Only* one remote hole in the default install, in more than 7 years!). How should one draw a line between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" risks of a security exploit?
All in all, it all boils down to how to draw a line between "bad" Microsoft that needs to be fined, and "good" Open source software that is exempt from these charges.
Besides, once a ruling is made that software companies are liable for bugs, then more will follow.
If monetary penalties were imposed on security bugs (or any other bugs for that matter), it would wreak havoc on the software industry. And the free software community would be one of the first to burn from the full heat of it. Microsoft will still have some cash to spare, but most organizations/people that produce/write free software have limited budgets.
I think what MS means is that a media player is essential for an "operating system". As another poster mentioned, every desktop OS comes with a multimedia application of some sort. For most people, one of the computer's main function is to play multimedia content. I, for one, wouldn't want to go through the hassle to download another multimedia player just to play some simple animations/sounds/music.
This has probably gone a bit too far in restricting Microsoft's actions, though if you take in consideration how much they've gotten away with, it's not necessarily a bad thing.
> Microsoft has a history of pulling the old > "embrace and extend" trick
Actually, for a change, Mono is doing the "embrace and extend" trick (embracing MS's standards, and probably adding some of their extensions). Given the proven success of this tactic, it wouldn't be a surprise if it eventually results in Mono's favor.
And the worst result we'll get is a crippled version of C# on Linux. We wouldn't get any C# support on Linux without the Mono project anyway.
Care to cite where you got your information from? And when?
And to explain how this would be different from an average city of similar scale? (we all know there is no such place with zero criminal activity where there is a dense population, the difference is on the rate and extent)
(Troll? But since you're spewing crap discrediting to my city, I'll respond)
Now where'd you get your ideas from? (lemme guess... HK movies?? The people who produce local movies are rarely well-educated people, and know nothing more than producing crap movies about made-belief, unrealistic gangster lives. All the other talented people in our movie industry go to Hollywood.)
>> Policing HK has become a nightmare. Our police forces are very much in control.
>> The Chinese mafia has essentially taken over the islands
The only people hiding in the Islands are probably illegal immigrants from mainland China. Not to say they don't pose any threat to the local people, but they are not in any way organized. And the reason they are there is because there are so many small islands around, it's impossible to patrol them all every single second.
>> and controls crime and legitimate business wtf? *Legit business? You're smoking crack. Hong Kong is a city with a International fame and has close links with businesses from all over the world. Surely you don't mean those businesses deal with thugs here?
>> from the top rungs of society down to the street gutters. Street gutters perhaps. Top of society, no. Frankly, I've never come in contact with any gangsters before.
>> lured some of the best and brightest of HK into the underworld where there is more money to be made than in the legitimate world. Most people who commit crimes here are anything but the "best and brightest". As for the money part, well, ain't it the major incentive for people committing crimes, as it always had been?
Hong Kong might not be the safest city in the world, but it is surely safer than many places in the world. There is no major crime problem here.
A very important point that you've missed is that open sourcing your software does NOT mean that you have to accept any modifications to your codebase from other people. You can GPL (or insert your favorite license) your code and still ignore all patches submitted. And you can ignore all comments, feature requests, etc from people who have looked at your code. (eg. what people have been saying about the XFree86 guys)
That basically renders all your arguments against open sourcing your code void.
Source based distributions generally require a significant bit of space to store the files needed for compilation (eg. headers, portage tree, etc). Not a good feature if one wants to fit the whole system to a small harddisk.
When a source package is compiled, usually everything that comes with the package is installed. I'm not a power user of Gentoo, so correct me if I'm wrong here. My experience, when I wanted to install an the ntpdate client, is that I had to install the whole ntp package, including server and client and everything else that comes with it, whereas in binary distributions they usually come in separate packages.
That said, Gentoo does provide great flexibility. Just in a different way from Debian.
Amen. That, and the fact that Gentoo tends to install everything from a source package, even if I only want a small utility that comes from the big source package. Debian is still the distro I've used that could be contained in a sub-100MB partition and still work perfectly without trying to eat up more space. (try *that* with Gentoo. The portage tree alone eats up at least a few hundred MBs of space)
For example, I had to install the whole ntp package -- server and client, to use the ntpdate client, whereas in Debian there's usually a separate package for each utility that still makes sense when used independently.
Of course, Gentoo has the advantage of letting the user choose compilation options, but nothing prevents you from compiling from source in debian yourself. The support is, admittedly not as good as that of Gentoo though.
$ apt-cache search vim | grep vim kvim - Vi IMproved - KDE 3.x version vim - Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor vim-doc - Vi IMproved - Documentation files vim-gnome - Vi IMproved - GNOME2 Version vim-gtk - Vi IMproved - GTK2 Version vim-latexsuite - Brings the LaTeX power to Vim vim-lesstif - Vi IMproved - LessTif Version vim-perl - Vi IMproved, with perl scripting support vim-python - Vi IMproved, with python scripting support vim-ruby - Vi IMproved, with ruby scripting support vim-scripts - plugins for vim, adding bells and whistles vim-tcl - Vi IMproved, with tcl scripting support vim-vimoutliner - a script for building an outline editor on top of Vim vimacs - Emacs emulation for Vim vimpart - Vim Component for KDE
And you could always choose to compile the thing from source yourself. But I prefer the convenience.
Netscape didn't even have a product since Version 4, while IE kept releasing new versions of their browsers, IE4, IE5, IE5.5, etc. If one was to compare the latest and best browser from both sides, at the time IE5 was out, then NS4 vs IE5 would be a fair comparison, since Moz didn't have a stable version of their product until years later.
Besides, having written web pages catering both browsers that that time, NS was a bitch to work with. It didn't render correctly, was slow, had numerous bugs, and had a limited featureset. OTOH, IE4+ was simply great. In the end, I simply resolved to a "Best viewed for IE" approach.
Of course, with Moz/Firefox/etc things have changed now, but back then IE was the superior browser.
Yes, most *Americans* would agree, but that is almost a result deduced by definition (after all, they voted for their government didn't they?).
But I doubt most Chinese would agree on your point.
The American system is more free and democratic, but that doesn't necessarily make the government better. And it doesn't necessarily makes the people happier.
(I could have modded you flamebait/troll, but I decided to reply.)
Do you have any proof to back that up? Last time China sent a man into orbit, the whole nation was axious and concerned about the astronaut's safety, and rejoiced when he came back safely.
Compare that with the "western" countries sending their men to war. "Yeah, some of our men died, but they died for a noble cause. And btw, we won. YEAH!" AFAIK more number of troops in Iraq die every day than the number of atronauts that would be put on a spacecraft to Mars. Of course it would be bad if something went wrong, but who could really ensure a 100% safe journey?
The Chinese *does* take into consideration the safety of the people put on mission. Rightfully so, too, otherwise who would be willing to step onboard that ship of doom?
I honestly don't understand why people (especially Americans) have such a warped idea about China. Perhaps your statements would be true half a century ago, but I still doubt it. And that's half a century ago when the nation was pillaged by raging wars and social instability. It's unfair to judge them by today's values.
"The gloves are OFF this time, I detest you, snot\n\0sed GEEK!");
do {not= *lie++ & 0xF00L* !me;
#define love (char*)lie -
love 1s *!(not= atoi(let
[get -me?
(char)lotte-
Slashdot Mirror
> since they are not owned by the government they
> were lower quality.
Government owned entities have much better funding and resources. At least that was true a few years ago. There was once a time when almost all companies were government owned. So it's not difficult to imagine that the relative newcomers had some catching up to do.
Besides, there are a lot of fishy things going on in smaller private companies, I guess China's the only place where you can find factories using Human hair to brew soysauce, producing milk powder that could kill infants, etc. For government owned entities, at least they provide SOME insurance to the safety of their products.
For jade shops, I'd guess there's a whole bunch of privately owned shops that are selling fake jades. I think that's what the lady meant by 'lower quality'.
> a scant two centuries ago insulting the king could
> cost you your head,
And what, a scant two centuries ago slavery was still the norm in the US? (FYI, the slavery system was abolished thousands of years ago in China.)
Different places/cultures have different views, values and thus progress for "freedom", "liberty". For example, you might think that the right to bear arms is a good thing, but for me, I don't see any need for that. And I'm perfectly happy that I don't have worry that a crazy neighbour could blast a hole on me with his shotgun. You live your way, and I live mine. I don't want people asserting their values on me.
Over time, things change, countries change, governments change. Please don't site your facts from a century or half a century ago. Every country has gone through her own horrible times. It's important not to linger onto the past and focus on things happening NOW. Or perhaps you're too indifferent to update your information?
Did I hear Windows 2000? MS has the habit of doing right things the wrong way. An example of a badly implemented idea does NOT necessarily make the whole idea bad. (mod me down or flame me, but I think the Windows registry is an example of such).
;-p
The grandparent post (and all others supporting the idea) have a point: Why on earth would you need the inactive getty's in memory? The problem of the Windows implementation is that the algorithm that determines which to swap out and which not is flawed. I have a server for testing and misc. purposes, and users (including me) frequently leave their vnc sessions unattended for days -- Moz, GNOME/KDE and all that stuff. I'd be all for removing the cruft from RAM until days later when the user comes back.
Of course, people like to label things. MS = bad. Windows = crash. Proactive swapping = bad. Registry = bad. etc... But come on, you're using a badly implemented Windows VM system as an argument against a Linux implementation?! IMHO, at least for Linux you can be assured that if the new VM turns out worse than the current one, either it would be kicked out of the main trunk, or you can find an alternate source tree with the old VM. So what's the problem? At least they're willing to try to improve their system for the benefit of all. Experimenting with new things and failing some is inevitable if you want a better system in the long run.
I thought Slashdotters knew better. I guess I must be new here
</rant>
Slashdotters are gonna love this then.
http://www.ioi2003.org/ioitasks/code.pdf
This is a task from an International programming competition (like a secondary school version of ACM). Unfortunately, I guess I failed as a slashdotter as I scored ZERO (my only zero for all six tasks) for that particular problem. I repent.
Why do you assume that everyone else was "sloppy" and just allocated a big array? If you're going to write a big-int routine it's not that much more difficult to write an arbitrary precision routine than it is to write a "max FOO" precision routine.
In these competition environments with severe time constraints, nobody would write an arbitrary precision routine when an upper limit of FOO is given. Some people do, however, set their "MAX" constant to something much larger than the given, but it is normally assumed that the given "FOO" is correct and the increased "MAX" constant is only to cater for some possible off-by-one or minor overflow errors instead of a problem of the input. After all, not everybody wants to calculate how much space to exactly allocate when some BIGNUM would seem to suffice. *That's* what the grandparent means regarding "sloppy coding".
Of course they should be punished for being a harmful monopoly and abusing their position.
But "abuse of monopoly" doesn't really have a direct link with "insecure software".
What IF Microsoft releases near perfect software (regarding security), are they then entitled to abuse their monopoly?
And what exactly should the charges be? MS is fined for releasing insecure software, because it is a harmful monopoly? Come on. Are you charging them for being a bad monopoly or are you charging them for releasing insecure software? Take one.
I see your point.
But the question is where to draw the line.
Distributions like, for example, RedHat bundles even more software with their many installation CD's (apparently more than MS). To many, they are unncessary, and you can sure bet a large portion of the included softare have security holes. Of course, RedHat doesn't have a history of disregarding court orders to unbundle their software, but still, I'd bet that if one day software companies are charged for releasing buggy software, it wouldn't only be Microsoft (or the monopoly of the time).
The main implication is "Companies could be fined for software bugs!". Sure you could compile a list of conditions on which companies are liable and which not, but I'm sure the list would only shrink over time. And don't forget the horde of lawyers eyeing this new "market" once such a ruling is made.
a) having a monopoly and b) using that monopoly coercively and c) refused to un-bundle extenstions
Existing laws are supposed to handle this situation. According to your logic, once an entity is convicted of doing (a),(b) and (c), it is additionally punished for writing buggy software. So somehow this has an implication that people who write buggy software (or non-100%-bug-free software) are prone to additional charges. Which is what I'm against.
I'd like to draw an analogy:
Imagine a person convicted of theft. Originally he'd have a sentence of 2 years, but since he looks ugly he gets another 1 year and is fined $1000 for smelling like rotten meat.
> Microsoft is a convicted monopolist
How about apache? It dominates the web server market. BIND for the DNS market? Or even BSD code in the MS Windows distribution? Of course, they are not monopolists, but AFAIK being a monopolist doesn't mean one has to make sure everything works perfect, while smaller entities could get away with distributing inferior products. So it's not really about being a monopolist rather than marketshare. If you're talking about marketshare, a lot of free software dominates niche markets (like in the above examples), should they be fined too?
Suppose one day Linux achieves world domination, are free software developers obligated to ensure their software is 100% bug-free?
> and has steadfastly refeused to unbundle these bug-infested products
If people use them, they use them. Unbundling it doesn't really make the situation better. Of course, those who do not use the bundled software will be less likely to be hit by these bugs, but for essential software like web browsers, media players, people will install them anyway. Of course, they might install products from other companies, but in general, it doesn't guarantee a more secure system.
> If they really believe that integrated media/internet/mail is part of the OS of the future, then they should ensure that said OS is secure
Nothing is 100% secure. Even OpenBSD has had a few holes in the past (*Only* one remote hole in the default install, in more than 7 years!). How should one draw a line between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" risks of a security exploit?
All in all, it all boils down to how to draw a line between "bad" Microsoft that needs to be fined, and "good" Open source software that is exempt from these charges.
Besides, once a ruling is made that software companies are liable for bugs, then more will follow.
How is this insightful?
If monetary penalties were imposed on security bugs (or any other bugs for that matter), it would wreak havoc on the software industry. And the free software community would be one of the first to burn from the full heat of it. Microsoft will still have some cash to spare, but most organizations/people that produce/write free software have limited budgets.
I think what MS means is that a media player is essential for an "operating system". As another poster mentioned, every desktop OS comes with a multimedia application of some sort. For most people, one of the computer's main function is to play multimedia content. I, for one, wouldn't want to go through the hassle to download another multimedia player just to play some simple animations/sounds/music.
This has probably gone a bit too far in restricting Microsoft's actions, though if you take in consideration how much they've gotten away with, it's not necessarily a bad thing.
> Microsoft has a history of pulling the old
> "embrace and extend" trick
Actually, for a change, Mono is doing the "embrace and extend" trick (embracing MS's standards, and probably adding some of their extensions). Given the proven success of this tactic, it wouldn't be a surprise if it eventually results in Mono's favor.
And the worst result we'll get is a crippled version of C# on Linux. We wouldn't get any C# support on Linux without the Mono project anyway.
Care to cite where you got your information from? And when?
And to explain how this would be different from an average city of similar scale? (we all know there is no such place with zero criminal activity where there is a dense population, the difference is on the rate and extent)
(Troll? But since you're spewing crap discrediting to my city, I'll respond)
Now where'd you get your ideas from? (lemme guess... HK movies?? The people who produce local movies are rarely well-educated people, and know nothing more than producing crap movies about made-belief, unrealistic gangster lives. All the other talented people in our movie industry go to Hollywood.)
>> Policing HK has become a nightmare.
Our police forces are very much in control.
>> The Chinese mafia has essentially taken over the islands
The only people hiding in the Islands are probably illegal immigrants from mainland China. Not to say they don't pose any threat to the local people, but they are not in any way organized. And the reason they are there is because there are so many small islands around, it's impossible to patrol them all every single second.
>> and controls crime and legitimate business
wtf? *Legit business? You're smoking crack. Hong Kong is a city with a International fame and has close links with businesses from all over the world. Surely you don't mean those businesses deal with thugs here?
>> from the top rungs of society down to the street gutters.
Street gutters perhaps. Top of society, no. Frankly, I've never come in contact with any gangsters before.
>> lured some of the best and brightest of HK into the underworld where there is more money to be made than in the legitimate world.
Most people who commit crimes here are anything but the "best and brightest". As for the money part, well, ain't it the major incentive for people committing crimes, as it always had been?
Hong Kong might not be the safest city in the world, but it is surely safer than many places in the world. There is no major crime problem here.
btw, I live in Hong Kong.
I live there (HK), and have never heard anything about a "robotcop".
(Or perhaps I oughta get out of my cave.....;-)
Sounds more like sth for fun/research purposes... I doubt one would ever see one of these in the streets...
A very important point that you've missed is that open sourcing your software does NOT mean that you have to accept any modifications to your codebase from other people. You can GPL (or insert your favorite license) your code and still ignore all patches submitted. And you can ignore all comments, feature requests, etc from people who have looked at your code. (eg. what people have been saying about the XFree86 guys)
That basically renders all your arguments against open sourcing your code void.
"Having a home at 30 and living with a beautiful girl" isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with being able to contribute to mankind's progress.
I agree with your points, just to point out the above fact.
Actually, if it's just "science" we're talking about, the boundary of "right and wrong" is more defined than that of real life applications.
It's not really *that* hard to prove, say, a quick-sort algorithm correct (or wrong).
I think that's what the grandparent means.
Gentoo indeed gives more flexibility.
But I see two problems:
Source based distributions generally require a significant bit of space to store the files needed for compilation (eg. headers, portage tree, etc). Not a good feature if one wants to fit the whole system to a small harddisk.
When a source package is compiled, usually everything that comes with the package is installed. I'm not a power user of Gentoo, so correct me if I'm wrong here. My experience, when I wanted to install an the ntpdate client, is that I had to install the whole ntp package, including server and client and everything else that comes with it, whereas in binary distributions they usually come in separate packages.
That said, Gentoo does provide great flexibility. Just in a different way from Debian.
Amen. That, and the fact that Gentoo tends to install everything from a source package, even if I only want a small utility that comes from the big source package. Debian is still the distro I've used that could be contained in a sub-100MB partition and still work perfectly without trying to eat up more space. (try *that* with Gentoo. The portage tree alone eats up at least a few hundred MBs of space)
For example, I had to install the whole ntp package -- server and client, to use the ntpdate client, whereas in Debian there's usually a separate package for each utility that still makes sense when used independently.
Of course, Gentoo has the advantage of letting the user choose compilation options, but nothing prevents you from compiling from source in debian yourself. The support is, admittedly not as good as that of Gentoo though.
Actually, Debian is close.
$ apt-cache search vim | grep vim
kvim - Vi IMproved - KDE 3.x version
vim - Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor
vim-doc - Vi IMproved - Documentation files
vim-gnome - Vi IMproved - GNOME2 Version
vim-gtk - Vi IMproved - GTK2 Version
vim-latexsuite - Brings the LaTeX power to Vim
vim-lesstif - Vi IMproved - LessTif Version
vim-perl - Vi IMproved, with perl scripting support
vim-python - Vi IMproved, with python scripting support
vim-ruby - Vi IMproved, with ruby scripting support
vim-scripts - plugins for vim, adding bells and whistles
vim-tcl - Vi IMproved, with tcl scripting support
vim-vimoutliner - a script for building an outline editor on top of Vim
vimacs - Emacs emulation for Vim
vimpart - Vim Component for KDE
And you could always choose to compile the thing from source yourself. But I prefer the convenience.
(btw, I'm posting from a Gentoo machine.)
Netscape didn't even have a product since Version 4, while IE kept releasing new versions of their browsers, IE4, IE5, IE5.5, etc. If one was to compare the latest and best browser from both sides, at the time IE5 was out, then NS4 vs IE5 would be a fair comparison, since Moz didn't have a stable version of their product until years later.
Besides, having written web pages catering both browsers that that time, NS was a bitch to work with. It didn't render correctly, was slow, had numerous bugs, and had a limited featureset. OTOH, IE4+ was simply great. In the end, I simply resolved to a "Best viewed for IE" approach.
Of course, with Moz/Firefox/etc things have changed now, but back then IE was the superior browser.
Yes, most *Americans* would agree, but that is almost a result deduced by definition (after all, they voted for their government didn't they?).
But I doubt most Chinese would agree on your point.
The American system is more free and democratic, but that doesn't necessarily make the government better. And it doesn't necessarily makes the people happier.
The converse holds.
(I could have modded you flamebait/troll, but I decided to reply.)
Do you have any proof to back that up? Last time China sent a man into orbit, the whole nation was axious and concerned about the astronaut's safety, and rejoiced when he came back safely.
Compare that with the "western" countries sending their men to war. "Yeah, some of our men died, but they died for a noble cause. And btw, we won. YEAH!" AFAIK more number of troops in Iraq die every day than the number of atronauts that would be put on a spacecraft to Mars. Of course it would be bad if something went wrong, but who could really ensure a 100% safe journey?
The Chinese *does* take into consideration the safety of the people put on mission. Rightfully so, too, otherwise who would be willing to step onboard that ship of doom?
I honestly don't understand why people (especially Americans) have such a warped idea about China. Perhaps your statements would be true half a century ago, but I still doubt it. And that's half a century ago when the nation was pillaged by raging wars and social instability. It's unfair to judge them by today's values.
char*lie; ;{
;lie;{
double time, me= !0XFACE,
not; int rested, get, out;
main(ly, die) char ly, **die
signed char lotte,
dear; (char)lotte--;
for(get= !me;; not){
1 - out & out
char lotte, my= dear,
**let= !!me *!not+ ++die;
(char*)(lie=
"The gloves are OFF this time, I detest you, snot\n\0sed GEEK!");
do {not= *lie++ & 0xF00L* !me;
#define love (char*)lie -
love 1s *!(not= atoi(let
[get -me?
(char)lotte-
(char)lotte: my- *love -
'I' - *love - 'U' -
'I' - (long) - 4 - 'U' ])- !!
(time =out= 'a'));} while( my - dear
&& 'I'-1l -get- 'a'); break;}}
(char)*lie++;
(char)*lie++, (char)*lie++; hell:0, (char)*lie;
get *out* (short)ly -0-'R'- get- 'a'^rested;
do {auto*eroticism,
that; puts(*( out
- 'c'
-('P'-'S') +die+ -2 ));}while(!"you're at it");
for (*((char*)&lotte)^=
(char)lotte; (love ly) [(char)++lotte+
!!0xBABE];){ if ('I' -lie[ 2 +(char)lotte]){ 'I'-1l ***die; }
else{ if ('I' * get *out* ('I'-1l **die[ 2 ])) *((char*)&lotte) -=
'4' - ('I'-1l); not; for(get=!
get; !out; (char)*lie & 0xD0- !not) return!!
(char)lotte;}
(char)lotte;
do{ not* putchar(lie [out
*!not* !!me +(char)lotte]);
not; for(;!'a';);}while(
love (char*)lie);{
register this; switch( (char)lie
[(char)lotte] -1s *!out) {
char*les, get= 0xFF, my; case' ':
*((char*)&lotte) += 15; !not +(char)*lie*'s';
this +1s+ not; default: 0xF +(char*)lie;}}}
get - !out;
if (not--)
goto hell;
exit( (char)lotte);}
http://www0.us.ioccc.org/1990/westley.c