The question should be - what about Michael Jackson's life leads people to believe that news of his death is so likely to be a prank that it must be immediately verified?
When someone forwards me a chain letter about some shocking bit of news, the first thing I do is look it up online. If it's a hoax (which forwarded chain letters almost always are), I reply back to the sender (or reply to all, if I'm really annoyed and want to publicly embarrass them) and try to stop the spreading of misinformation.
When someone told me airplanes had crashed into the WTC and Pentagon, the first thing I did was look it up online. Since the first few news sites I tried were all overloaded, I immediately went to the TV to find out why.
When someone told me Michael Jackson was dead, the first thing I did was look it up online. Once I had confirmed that it was true, that was really all I needed to know. I did read one article with some details, so that I would be prepared to converse intelligently about it, because I knew that people would be talking about this. I don't really care that much, but as a functioning member of society, I like to be aware of the things that other people are talking about.
I hope this moves right into airline security. If the school can't search a student without a warrant, why can the TSA (government agency) search our bags and persons without a warrant?
The theory is that although attending school is required by law, you don't have to fly. By choosing to fly, you voluntarily agree to be searched. Of course the reality is that other forms of long-distance travel are prohibitively inconvenient, but they're right that everyone who chooses to fly understands the rules beforehand.
Something that most people don't understand is that spam is NOT universal. Every e-mail address is unique, and will get a different assortment of spam. Some of the users on my mail server get spam that I don't get, and I get spam that they don't get.
In particular, a new e-mail address will never get spam, unless:
A spammer randomly guesses the address, using a dictionary attack
The address is posted on a web site, and scraped by a spammer
The address is submitted to a company or organization which posts it on their site
Malware extracts the address from somebody's address book
Somebody hacks into a company or organization that the address and takes it from their database
Some sleazy company sells it
That's pretty much it. #1 is only likely if your username is common (like just your first name). #3 isn't a common problem anymore, since most sites either don't post their users' e-mail addresses, or they obfuscate them (like Slashdot does). #5 isn't a common problem either. I've only gotten burned by #6 a few times.
If I make a page with an e-mail address on it, I want Google to index everything except the e-mail address. Apparently now we need a new way to hide specific bits of content from bots, while leaving the rest of the page unobfuscated.
I believe Apple would LOVE this. The needed the exclusive contract in order to get various concessions from the carrier (visual voicemail support, setting a reasonable price point, not offering the phone with anything less than an unlimited data plan). Consumer demand has proven high enough that there's a clear incentive for carriers like T-Mobile to invest in supporting visual voicemail if Apple will allow them to sell it. Consumers have seen how Apple intends for the iPhone to work with a cooperative carrier, and I think any carrier that behaved differently (e.g. if Verizon tried to cripple the phone and add extra fees) would face significant pressure from consumers to behave themselves.
I'm sure adding support for Verizon and Sprint is non-trivial, but it could mean selling a lot more iPhones in the US, especially if Apple can figure out how to make a single phone that is transferrable between carriers. Putting this power into the hands of consumers would force the carriers to better compete against each other, which could only benefit Apple.
If I burn copies of the movie to DVD, put it in a plastic case and sell it on the street, I'll include a cover label with that same information, and make sure potential buyers don't mistakenly believe it's really my film.... However, plagiarism is completely different, and if you plagiarize and profit from it, you're not going to get much sympathy.
That's so cute. You'll rip off movies and sell them for a profit with a clean conscience, but if someone copies *your* work and makes a buck then you're going to cry about it.
Oh, how I love Slashdot...
Why is it difficult for you to understand how someone could find plagiarism morally repugnant but not object to copyright infringement? Both are illegal, but they're totally different offenses. It has nothing to do with who created the work and who is using it inappropriately.
If you disagree with this position (obviously many do), that's fine. State your position, and explain why you feel that way.
Mac OS 9 is certainly capable of multitasking (either cooperative or preemptive, according to Wikipedia) and can edit multimedia content just fine (what platform did you think iMovie was designed for?). Of course, it only ran on PowerPC processors, so that might be an issue....
I love the double-standard so much. Piracy is fine but GPL violations ? OH GOD STOP THE PRESSES.
Here's the difference:
If I copy code that you wrote, incorporate parts of it into my own software, and release it as my own without crediting you (either for sale in a commercial product or under a free license), I am plagiarizing your work. I am taking the credit for a work you created.
If I download a movie you created from a P2P network, and make it available for others to download from me, I am not taking any credit for creating the movie. If I rip a DVD and upload it via BitTorrent, not only will I not take the credit for creating the film, but I'll include a description that gives proper credit to the people who did, and links to the film's official web site and IMDB for more details. If I burn copies of the movie to DVD, put it in a plastic case and sell it on the street, I'll include a cover label with that same information, and make sure potential buyers don't mistakenly believe it's really my film.
If I copy a video game from a friend at a LAN party, and set up a shared drive on the LAN so everyone else can install it too, I am not taking any credit for creating the game myself. Everyone there understands that the company who did create the game put a lot of resources into its development, and their employees are proud of what they've created. If I charge admission for people to come to the party, nobody thinks I had anything to do with the creation of the games we're playing.
All of these are copyright violations, and I could profit from them. However, only the first example involves any sort of dishonesty. Many Slashdotters don't have a huge objection to copyright infringement by itself, as long as you're not profiting from it (for example, downloading a movie but not selling DVDs; sharing games at a LAN party but not charging admission). However, plagiarism is completely different, and if you plagiarize and profit from it, you're not going to get much sympathy.
I had to uninstall IE8 from vista because it screwed up folder views for all of Vista. For some weird reason, on some systems, IE8 causes every folder to be opened in a new window. The only fix at the time was to go back to IE7. Pretty sad when upgrading a browser downgrades your OS.
That's very weird, and definitely shouldn't happen. Out of curiosity, if you upgrade to IE8 again, does the problem recur?
IE and Windows Explorer used to be tightly intertwined (they wanted to be able to argue in court that IE couldn't be removed from Windows, back in the IE4 days), but beginning with IE7 they've broken a lot of those ties, so upgrading from IE7 to IE8 shouldn't have this kind of effect.
EricLaw [MSFT] (Expert): Q: @Eric: I had heard that IE is closely linked to Win Explorer (we can embed WinExp in a WebBrowser Control, at least). And WinExp is updated on each OS. A: As of IE7, the "links" are much looser than ever before. As both IE and Explorer are COM objects, they can interact, but the relationship between Explorer and IE changed significantly in IE7.
IE is going to have to work damn hard to get rid of that reputation amoungst developers
You're absolutely right, but to be fair, they really have been working damn hard recently. IE8 sucks a lot less than previous versions. But just fixing IE won't magically solve the problem - the other required component is time.
Web developers don't care that much that IE8 doesn't suck, because they still have to support IE6. However, a lot of major web sites have decided to drop support for IE6 soon, which will be the catalyst that finally pushes most of IE6's users to upgrade. Businesses are also starting to see the writing on the wall, and they're working on fixing their intranet crap so it works in newer browsers. In time, usage of IE6 will have dropped far enough that web developers will feel confident about ignoring IE6, the same way they ignore IE5 today, and ignored IE4 a few years ago. When that happens, there will be much rejoicing.
Unfortunately IE7 will be with us for some time, but thanks to widespread (but only partially justified) hatred of Windows Vista, I suspect a lot of people will be upgrading to Windows 7 next year as the XP machines they've been clinging to eventually die. The vast majority of people upgrading from IE6 will be going straight to IE8. So while IE7 will be around for a long time, hopefully it won't be around in large numbers, and maybe we can start to ignore it too in a couple years.
Web Standards - IE8: * FF: CR: * - It's a tie. Internet Explorer 8 passes more of the World Wide Web Consortium's CSS 2.1 test cases than any other browser, but Firefox 3 has more support for some evolving standards.
This is the most interesting lie I noticed. For the record, if all 3221 of those test cases Microsoft submitted to the W3C are legitimate (and, if the W3C has incorporated them into the test suite, I would hope that they are), then it doesn't particularly bother me that Microsoft's contributions make up 87% of the test suite. What it tells me is, Microsoft has been very active at finding CSS bugs in IE (which, to be fair, is rather like shooting fish in a barrel). It just happens that the CSS bugs that Microsoft has fixed recently aren't all the same ones that Mozilla and Apple and Opera have fixed. That's fine. Test suites are one of the ways we can quickly identify bugs that need fixing, and by contributing to the W3C's CSS test suite, Microsoft is actually helping other browser vendors to find their own bugs. This is a Good Thing.
However, this is obviously not a complete test suite, and I'd bet IE doesn't "[pass] more... test cases than any other browser" by a particularly wide margin. Presumably, IE passes all the tests that Microsoft has submitted, which is 87% of them. I'd guess that pre-release versions of other browsers probably pass even more, but Microsoft probably only compared shipping versions (which is fair, but doesn't tell the whole story).
Interesting that they single out Firefox 3 for having "more support for some evolving standards." Are they referring to things that Firefox 3 supports but Chrome doesn't, or are they being disingenuous again?
who says you *have* to use it? i use itunes elusively for iPhone updates. nothing requires you to use the software for mp3s or anything else.
If you're in a corporate environment and don't have Administrator access, you can't install the newest version of iTunes, which means you can't use iTunes for iPhone updates, regardless of whether you want to use it to play music.
It's not designed to be comprehensive, it's designed to highlight a selection of common problems.
and futhermore it encourages browser vendors to develop for the test.
This is absolutely true, and it's one of the criticisms of ACID3 that will be taken into account when designing ACID4. However, as NaCh0 said, there's not really anything wrong with browsers designing for the test, as long as the test is based on standards that we all want implemented. ACID4 will be better about this.
In practice ACID acts to promote adoption of bleeding edge features (some of which aren't even standardized yet),
Which features tested in ACID3 aren't standardized? Can you be specific? Sometimes the development of an ACID test uncovers deficiencies in the standards documentation, which is also good to fix.
and quantitiavely says IE sucks.
It also quantitatively says IE8 doesn't really suck that much. Microsoft is a few years behind, but they're back on board now and working hard to catch up.
As an actual QA tool or something web developers need to worry about, it's mostly useless.
It's not intended for web developers (people who create web pages) at all; it's intended for browser developers (people working on Gecko, WebKit, Trident and Presto). Web developers get the indirect benefit of having the code they write work across more browsers without needing browser-specific hacks to work around all the incompatibilities.
ACID3 isn't perfect. Ian Hickson, the guy in charge of HTML5 and who created ACID3, is well aware of that, and he'll do better next time. Users shouldn't avoid Firefox because it doesn't pass ACID3. Developers should continue to fix the problems in Firefox that prevent it from passing ACID3, in addition to other bugs in Firefox that ACID3 doesn't test for. Developers should also tell hixie what they do and do not want tested for in ACID4!
No, that is Gulf Capital Partners, Inc, of Houston. There is also a Gulf Capital, of London, but they are a consultancy firm specialising in Iraq and other emerging markets in the Middle East. So my guess is that this is a new company formed specifically for this transaction, perhaps taking advantage of the other similarly named companies as a smokescreen to give this transaction the credibility it needs to buy a delay in the bankruptcy proceedings. Unfortunately the UK government have decided that their company register only needs to be available from 7am to midnight UK time (WTF? Are they using Mechanical Turk on the backend or something?), so I can't confirm any of this.
Ooooooh. My mistake.
If you're right, then that would point the finger at an outside agency. The Gulf Capital Partners I looked at seemed legitimate, and I didn't think they would go along with a sleazy deal from Microsoft, but if this is a different Gulf Capital that nobody knows anything about, then I would definitely believe it.
Alright, so, can somebody find out for sure exactly which Gulf Capital we're talking about, who they are, what they do, and how long they've been in business?
Acid tests are designed to highlight rendering bugs in current browsers, giving browser developers a chance to easily see where something is going wrong. All major browsers currently pass Acid2, which means if you create a web page that only uses the kind of code that Acid2 tests for, you can be sure it will render precisely the same way in current versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Chrome, etc. This is a huge step forward; ten years ago, it wasn't uncommon for a page to work correctly in one browser but be completely unusable in another.
Now that all the major browsers pass Acid2, we need to find other ways in which web pages can display differently between different browsers. Since there is an official standard that defines what the correct behavior should be, we have something to test against; this is what Acid3 does. You're absolutely correct that passing Acid3 should not be the top priority, and failure to pass Acid3 is not a good reason for a user not to choose Firefox. However, the remaining things that prevent Firefox from passing Acid3 are indeed bugs, and eventually, they do need to be fixed. There are also other bugs in Firefox, that also need to be fixed, and many of these are more important than the bugs that cause Acid3 to fail.
I agree that HTML5 and CSS3 are awesome, but if browsers can't render them correctly, they're not much good. Acid tests are an incredibly useful tool for browser developers to ensure that this happens. Acid4 is already being planned, and will help to find bugs in the way browsers handle HTML5 and CSS3 and SVG and other stuff, taking into account some of the lessons learned from problems with the Acid3 test (for example, Acid3 tests rendering speed; Acid4 will not).
I'd like to know what they are thinking for 1) considering buying SCO and 2) leaving Darl McBride in charge if allowed to purchase SCO.
One would think after where the company ended up a leadership change would be the first order of business.
Darl wouldn't be in charge of what Gulf Capital Partners would be buying. He'd be in charge of the even-emptier shell they'd be leaving behind. They're not buying SCO, they're buying SCO's UNIX product line.
They're an investment banking firm. I see two possibilities: either SCO managed to convince them that if they only had enough funds, they could turn their flavor of UNIX into a hugely profitable product, or Gulf Capital Partners is already one of SCO's few customers and they want to make sure they don't lose support when the company shuts its doors.
The latter would surprise me.
Maybe somebody should ask them what the hell they're thinking?
people is aware that they shall only use trusted usb sticks and open trusted email
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at your naive quote. You just summarized a network administrator's worst nightmare: Trusted USB sticks and Trusted email. Tell me, how do you "trust" a USB stick? Put a stamp on it?
You buy a handful of blank USB flash drives, scan them with ClamAV to make sure the manufacturer isn't incompetent, and never use them outside the office. Now you can trust them as much as you trust the computers in the office. It's not that complicated.
Slashdot Mirror
The question should be - what about Michael Jackson's life leads people to believe that news of his death is so likely to be a prank that it must be immediately verified?
When someone forwards me a chain letter about some shocking bit of news, the first thing I do is look it up online. If it's a hoax (which forwarded chain letters almost always are), I reply back to the sender (or reply to all, if I'm really annoyed and want to publicly embarrass them) and try to stop the spreading of misinformation.
When someone told me airplanes had crashed into the WTC and Pentagon, the first thing I did was look it up online. Since the first few news sites I tried were all overloaded, I immediately went to the TV to find out why.
When someone told me Michael Jackson was dead, the first thing I did was look it up online. Once I had confirmed that it was true, that was really all I needed to know. I did read one article with some details, so that I would be prepared to converse intelligently about it, because I knew that people would be talking about this. I don't really care that much, but as a functioning member of society, I like to be aware of the things that other people are talking about.
It's not just Iran.
Uh, no it doesn't.
You kid, but this extreme case highlights the stupidity of using 'age' to determine someone's ability to make life-changing decisions.
In five more years she'll be old enough to drink!
I hope this moves right into airline security. If the school can't search a student without a warrant, why can the TSA (government agency) search our bags and persons without a warrant?
The theory is that although attending school is required by law, you don't have to fly. By choosing to fly, you voluntarily agree to be searched. Of course the reality is that other forms of long-distance travel are prohibitively inconvenient, but they're right that everyone who chooses to fly understands the rules beforehand.
Never underestimate the ingenuity of a six-year-old.
Something that most people don't understand is that spam is NOT universal. Every e-mail address is unique, and will get a different assortment of spam. Some of the users on my mail server get spam that I don't get, and I get spam that they don't get.
In particular, a new e-mail address will never get spam, unless:
That's pretty much it. #1 is only likely if your username is common (like just your first name). #3 isn't a common problem anymore, since most sites either don't post their users' e-mail addresses, or they obfuscate them (like Slashdot does). #5 isn't a common problem either. I've only gotten burned by #6 a few times.
If I make a page with an e-mail address on it, I want Google to index everything except the e-mail address. Apparently now we need a new way to hide specific bits of content from bots, while leaving the rest of the page unobfuscated.
I believe Apple would LOVE this. The needed the exclusive contract in order to get various concessions from the carrier (visual voicemail support, setting a reasonable price point, not offering the phone with anything less than an unlimited data plan). Consumer demand has proven high enough that there's a clear incentive for carriers like T-Mobile to invest in supporting visual voicemail if Apple will allow them to sell it. Consumers have seen how Apple intends for the iPhone to work with a cooperative carrier, and I think any carrier that behaved differently (e.g. if Verizon tried to cripple the phone and add extra fees) would face significant pressure from consumers to behave themselves.
I'm sure adding support for Verizon and Sprint is non-trivial, but it could mean selling a lot more iPhones in the US, especially if Apple can figure out how to make a single phone that is transferrable between carriers. Putting this power into the hands of consumers would force the carriers to better compete against each other, which could only benefit Apple.
If I burn copies of the movie to DVD, put it in a plastic case and sell it on the street, I'll include a cover label with that same information, and make sure potential buyers don't mistakenly believe it's really my film.... However, plagiarism is completely different, and if you plagiarize and profit from it, you're not going to get much sympathy.
That's so cute. You'll rip off movies and sell them for a profit with a clean conscience, but if someone copies *your* work and makes a buck then you're going to cry about it.
Oh, how I love Slashdot...
Why is it difficult for you to understand how someone could find plagiarism morally repugnant but not object to copyright infringement? Both are illegal, but they're totally different offenses. It has nothing to do with who created the work and who is using it inappropriately.
If you disagree with this position (obviously many do), that's fine. State your position, and explain why you feel that way.
Mac OS 9 is certainly capable of multitasking (either cooperative or preemptive, according to Wikipedia) and can edit multimedia content just fine (what platform did you think iMovie was designed for?). Of course, it only ran on PowerPC processors, so that might be an issue....
I'm thinking, port it to JavaScript...
I love the double-standard so much. Piracy is fine but GPL violations ? OH GOD STOP THE PRESSES.
Here's the difference:
If I copy code that you wrote, incorporate parts of it into my own software, and release it as my own without crediting you (either for sale in a commercial product or under a free license), I am plagiarizing your work. I am taking the credit for a work you created.
If I download a movie you created from a P2P network, and make it available for others to download from me, I am not taking any credit for creating the movie. If I rip a DVD and upload it via BitTorrent, not only will I not take the credit for creating the film, but I'll include a description that gives proper credit to the people who did, and links to the film's official web site and IMDB for more details. If I burn copies of the movie to DVD, put it in a plastic case and sell it on the street, I'll include a cover label with that same information, and make sure potential buyers don't mistakenly believe it's really my film.
If I copy a video game from a friend at a LAN party, and set up a shared drive on the LAN so everyone else can install it too, I am not taking any credit for creating the game myself. Everyone there understands that the company who did create the game put a lot of resources into its development, and their employees are proud of what they've created. If I charge admission for people to come to the party, nobody thinks I had anything to do with the creation of the games we're playing.
All of these are copyright violations, and I could profit from them. However, only the first example involves any sort of dishonesty. Many Slashdotters don't have a huge objection to copyright infringement by itself, as long as you're not profiting from it (for example, downloading a movie but not selling DVDs; sharing games at a LAN party but not charging admission). However, plagiarism is completely different, and if you plagiarize and profit from it, you're not going to get much sympathy.
I had to uninstall IE8 from vista because it screwed up folder views for all of Vista. For some weird reason, on some systems, IE8 causes every folder to be opened in a new window. The only fix at the time was to go back to IE7. Pretty sad when upgrading a browser downgrades your OS.
That's very weird, and definitely shouldn't happen. Out of curiosity, if you upgrade to IE8 again, does the problem recur?
IE and Windows Explorer used to be tightly intertwined (they wanted to be able to argue in court that IE couldn't be removed from Windows, back in the IE4 days), but beginning with IE7 they've broken a lot of those ties, so upgrading from IE7 to IE8 shouldn't have this kind of effect.
EricLaw [MSFT] (Expert):
Q: @Eric: I had heard that IE is closely linked to Win Explorer (we can embed WinExp in a WebBrowser Control, at least). And WinExp is updated on each OS.
A: As of IE7, the "links" are much looser than ever before. As both IE and Explorer are COM objects, they can interact, but the relationship between Explorer and IE changed significantly in IE7.
Source
IE is going to have to work damn hard to get rid of that reputation amoungst developers
You're absolutely right, but to be fair, they really have been working damn hard recently. IE8 sucks a lot less than previous versions. But just fixing IE won't magically solve the problem - the other required component is time.
Web developers don't care that much that IE8 doesn't suck, because they still have to support IE6. However, a lot of major web sites have decided to drop support for IE6 soon, which will be the catalyst that finally pushes most of IE6's users to upgrade. Businesses are also starting to see the writing on the wall, and they're working on fixing their intranet crap so it works in newer browsers. In time, usage of IE6 will have dropped far enough that web developers will feel confident about ignoring IE6, the same way they ignore IE5 today, and ignored IE4 a few years ago. When that happens, there will be much rejoicing.
Unfortunately IE7 will be with us for some time, but thanks to widespread (but only partially justified) hatred of Windows Vista, I suspect a lot of people will be upgrading to Windows 7 next year as the XP machines they've been clinging to eventually die. The vast majority of people upgrading from IE6 will be going straight to IE8. So while IE7 will be around for a long time, hopefully it won't be around in large numbers, and maybe we can start to ignore it too in a couple years.
Yes, Mozilla is lying.
They put a tick next to "Compatible with modern Web pages and technologies" for IE.
Well, Firefox doesn't pass ACID3, so they have to consider ACID2 to be "modern", and IE8 passes that just fine...
That's actually quite doable. Could anyone check the legality?
It isn't, but it'd be fun, so go ahead and do it anyway!*
* This is not legal advice and I hereby disclaim all responsibility for your actions.
A barefaced, shameless, utterly false lie. For you see, there is no W3C CSS 2.1 test suite. There is a Pre-Alpha CSS 2.1 Test Suite , but upon further investigation it can be seen that the IE team themselves have submitted at least 3221 of the 3708 test cases, or at least that was the case last August 18th.
This is the most interesting lie I noticed. For the record, if all 3221 of those test cases Microsoft submitted to the W3C are legitimate (and, if the W3C has incorporated them into the test suite, I would hope that they are), then it doesn't particularly bother me that Microsoft's contributions make up 87% of the test suite. What it tells me is, Microsoft has been very active at finding CSS bugs in IE (which, to be fair, is rather like shooting fish in a barrel). It just happens that the CSS bugs that Microsoft has fixed recently aren't all the same ones that Mozilla and Apple and Opera have fixed. That's fine. Test suites are one of the ways we can quickly identify bugs that need fixing, and by contributing to the W3C's CSS test suite, Microsoft is actually helping other browser vendors to find their own bugs. This is a Good Thing.
However, this is obviously not a complete test suite, and I'd bet IE doesn't "[pass] more... test cases than any other browser" by a particularly wide margin. Presumably, IE passes all the tests that Microsoft has submitted, which is 87% of them. I'd guess that pre-release versions of other browsers probably pass even more, but Microsoft probably only compared shipping versions (which is fair, but doesn't tell the whole story).
Interesting that they single out Firefox 3 for having "more support for some evolving standards." Are they referring to things that Firefox 3 supports but Chrome doesn't, or are they being disingenuous again?
who says you *have* to use it? i use itunes elusively for iPhone updates. nothing requires you to use the software for mp3s or anything else.
If you're in a corporate environment and don't have Administrator access, you can't install the newest version of iTunes, which means you can't use iTunes for iPhone updates, regardless of whether you want to use it to play music.
ACID isn't comprehensive enough to do this,
It's not designed to be comprehensive, it's designed to highlight a selection of common problems.
and futhermore it encourages browser vendors to develop for the test.
This is absolutely true, and it's one of the criticisms of ACID3 that will be taken into account when designing ACID4. However, as NaCh0 said, there's not really anything wrong with browsers designing for the test, as long as the test is based on standards that we all want implemented. ACID4 will be better about this.
In practice ACID acts to promote adoption of bleeding edge features (some of which aren't even standardized yet),
Which features tested in ACID3 aren't standardized? Can you be specific? Sometimes the development of an ACID test uncovers deficiencies in the standards documentation, which is also good to fix.
and quantitiavely says IE sucks.
It also quantitatively says IE8 doesn't really suck that much. Microsoft is a few years behind, but they're back on board now and working hard to catch up.
As an actual QA tool or something web developers need to worry about, it's mostly useless.
It's not intended for web developers (people who create web pages) at all; it's intended for browser developers (people working on Gecko, WebKit, Trident and Presto). Web developers get the indirect benefit of having the code they write work across more browsers without needing browser-specific hacks to work around all the incompatibilities.
ACID3 isn't perfect. Ian Hickson, the guy in charge of HTML5 and who created ACID3, is well aware of that, and he'll do better next time. Users shouldn't avoid Firefox because it doesn't pass ACID3. Developers should continue to fix the problems in Firefox that prevent it from passing ACID3, in addition to other bugs in Firefox that ACID3 doesn't test for. Developers should also tell hixie what they do and do not want tested for in ACID4!
No, that is Gulf Capital Partners, Inc, of Houston. There is also a Gulf Capital, of London, but they are a consultancy firm specialising in Iraq and other emerging markets in the Middle East. So my guess is that this is a new company formed specifically for this transaction, perhaps taking advantage of the other similarly named companies as a smokescreen to give this transaction the credibility it needs to buy a delay in the bankruptcy proceedings. Unfortunately the UK government have decided that their company register only needs to be available from 7am to midnight UK time (WTF? Are they using Mechanical Turk on the backend or something?), so I can't confirm any of this.
Ooooooh. My mistake.
If you're right, then that would point the finger at an outside agency. The Gulf Capital Partners I looked at seemed legitimate, and I didn't think they would go along with a sleazy deal from Microsoft, but if this is a different Gulf Capital that nobody knows anything about, then I would definitely believe it.
Alright, so, can somebody find out for sure exactly which Gulf Capital we're talking about, who they are, what they do, and how long they've been in business?
Acid tests are designed to highlight rendering bugs in current browsers, giving browser developers a chance to easily see where something is going wrong. All major browsers currently pass Acid2, which means if you create a web page that only uses the kind of code that Acid2 tests for, you can be sure it will render precisely the same way in current versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Chrome, etc. This is a huge step forward; ten years ago, it wasn't uncommon for a page to work correctly in one browser but be completely unusable in another.
Now that all the major browsers pass Acid2, we need to find other ways in which web pages can display differently between different browsers. Since there is an official standard that defines what the correct behavior should be, we have something to test against; this is what Acid3 does. You're absolutely correct that passing Acid3 should not be the top priority, and failure to pass Acid3 is not a good reason for a user not to choose Firefox. However, the remaining things that prevent Firefox from passing Acid3 are indeed bugs, and eventually, they do need to be fixed. There are also other bugs in Firefox, that also need to be fixed, and many of these are more important than the bugs that cause Acid3 to fail.
I agree that HTML5 and CSS3 are awesome, but if browsers can't render them correctly, they're not much good. Acid tests are an incredibly useful tool for browser developers to ensure that this happens. Acid4 is already being planned, and will help to find bugs in the way browsers handle HTML5 and CSS3 and SVG and other stuff, taking into account some of the lessons learned from problems with the Acid3 test (for example, Acid3 tests rendering speed; Acid4 will not).
I'd like to know what they are thinking for 1) considering buying SCO and 2) leaving Darl McBride in charge if allowed to purchase SCO.
One would think after where the company ended up a leadership change would be the first order of business.
Darl wouldn't be in charge of what Gulf Capital Partners would be buying. He'd be in charge of the even-emptier shell they'd be leaving behind. They're not buying SCO, they're buying SCO's UNIX product line.
They're an investment banking firm. I see two possibilities: either SCO managed to convince them that if they only had enough funds, they could turn their flavor of UNIX into a hugely profitable product, or Gulf Capital Partners is already one of SCO's few customers and they want to make sure they don't lose support when the company shuts its doors.
The latter would surprise me.
Maybe somebody should ask them what the hell they're thinking?
people is aware that they shall only use trusted usb sticks and open trusted email
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at your naive quote.
You just summarized a network administrator's worst nightmare: Trusted USB sticks and Trusted email.
Tell me, how do you "trust" a USB stick? Put a stamp on it?
You buy a handful of blank USB flash drives, scan them with ClamAV to make sure the manufacturer isn't incompetent, and never use them outside the office. Now you can trust them as much as you trust the computers in the office. It's not that complicated.