With all the firefox bashing going on in the comments, I'd like to just chime in with a little positive feedback.
I just installed Firefox Beta 9 on my desktop (after running betas on my laptop for a few months) and it is sweet! It's stable, attractive (well, not so much in XP, but I picked up a skin), and fast. Impressive polish for a Beta release!
I have run Chrome and Opera, but I always come back to Firefox. I've stated my personal preference on a web forum! Woopdeedoo!
Point A: nobody cares about Time Magazine nor their 'Man of the Year' award (in 2006 the 'Man of the Year' was "You") Point B: nobody likes Mark Zuckerberg.
and (veering off topic)
Point C: I think Assange is in trouble because wikileaks leaked cables the United States declared secret, not because of any leaks about corporations. Now, if those secret cables had contained anything surprising, Assange might've been able to convince people he was a hero. But at best the cables are just background and further confirmation of details that had already been widely reported. So the release of a "treasure trove" of mostly boring documents pissed off the American government, but hasn't made waves beyond that.
If and when Assange and Wikileaks go back to leaking things that embarrass entities other than the United States, and if those things are actually pertinent, maybe Time will make him man of the year next year.
What do your allergies have to do with the development of effective vaccines and their dissemination to a large enough population to effectively eradicate diseases? Or do you think that Measles, Polio, and Tetanus are also caused by bad habits?
Besides that, you may be lucky enough in this stage of your life to have no life-threatening illnesses and the resources to live in a way that's healthy, but a great many people (through no fault of their own) do not have such luxuries. They're sick with real illnesses now. And "Big Pharma" provides millions (billions?) of people medicines that help them live full and active lives.
"Big Pharma" also provides other wacky stuff, manipulates pricing, has a deleterious effect on politics and causes all sorts of other problems. Much the same way most large, profitable industries do. I am not qualified to be the arbiter of whether the lives saved/extended/improved by modern medicine are worth more or less than Big Pharma's societal costs, but in my humble opinion they are.
I hope that you are able to live the rest of your life in complete health, but it's intellectually lazy to assert that the major health problems of others are caused by things they have control over.
RockMelt is the first browser you log into, it unlocks your Web experience with your Facebook friends, your feeds, your favorite services, even your bookmarks and preferences
Wow! It unlocks the web experience! That does sound totally awesome!
radtea never said anything about it being easy to solve the worlds problems
actually that's exactly what he says:
If wiping out hunger, poverty AIDS or terrorism would actually make someone money, then yes, it would be done very rapidly
Second, it doesn't particularly matter to the conversation what radtea is doing offline. I reject the nihilistic world-view of the all-powerful-them vs. the victimized-us espoused in his post.
I salute you for resisting using all caps and maintaining a conversational tone, at least.
You're positing that all the world's problems are not only solvable, but easily solvable. I'm sorry to break this to you, but humanity is not omnipotent, we're barely competent. And yes, I am including those bad actors you accuse of creating war, disease and starvation in order to profit.
You mention some serious issues, but you're not helping to solve them by imagining a capitalist conspiracy of a mysterious "them" against the righteous "us". You're misdirecting your energies against ghosts and shadows instead of supporting what actually leads to progress: political activity, scientific research, charity and education.
the right to be judged by a jury of your peers is positive.
And it's simple enough to show speech as a positive right: If I express my right to free speech at 150dbs, then anyone within hearing distance of my speech is having their right to speech reduced or eliminated.
the article mentions two private companies with some suggestions for how they can make money off the oil spill.
first guy says "buy my sweeper arms" and "don't use dispersant". Even the article admits that they are using his sweeper arms now. the EPA must have given them a waiver! who would have thought they could do that? the utility of dispersants a mile below sea level is a huge question mark. it might turn out to be the best thing BP did. it might turn out to be a huge environmental disaster.
the second guy says "build huge berms". the berms that don't work to stop the oil? the berms that are severely disruptive to the ecosystem? yeah, those. except, you know, larger. I am sure no one in America has thought of making the berms bigger. or maybe scientists examined their proposal and found that the risks far outweighed any benefits.
it's called a waiver. the EPA gives them out all the time.
in fact, remember the "whale" boat, the oil tanker that was going to be the gulf's salvation, but was being held up by all that red tape? They got their waiver (took about a day) and, well, it doesn't work.
But, if it makes you feel better, go ahead and keep railing against the EPA.
Apple went to Verizon first. Verizon said "We'll give you the same cut as we give everyone else" and Jobs said no and went to AT&T who basically gave away the farm to get the iPhone.
the biggest reason there is no Verizon or Spring iPhone right now is that Apple wants more money than either is willing to give. And meanwhile, Apple can continue to demand concessions from AT&T, keeping them cowering in fear of losing that exclusive status.
it's a very cushy situation for Apple, but it has nothing to do with this article.
Your posts defines two distinct categories: URLs and Search Terms. Most people don't think about those things as separate ideas. They're just means of telling the internet to show a website.
The key distinction between a URL and a search term is that URLs are hard to remember and prone to typos. Search terms are far easier (and tend to be helpful even if you spell them wrong). why would I want to type in "http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/" when I can just type in "krugman" (or "krugrman") and get my daily Keynesian economic analysis that way.
For the browser, the URL and the search term are completely distinct. For an engineer or a software programmer, it's clear why they would have separate fields for entry of one or the other.
But for a user (even a technically savvy user) semantic cleanliness doesn't make any sense and causes more problems than benefits.
the trial was about the linking of the Microsoft's browser to their monopoly OS. that they did it in a way that made it hard to undo does not make it less anti-competitive.
the argument that Microsoft made at the trial was that a web browser was then and always would be a crucial part of the OS. to a technical person, this argument makes no sense -- as it's just a matter of programming. which is why you (and many others) have chosen to defend a weaker formulation of Microsoft's argument (that they only said it would be hard to untangle -- I'm sure they said that as well, but I can't imagine a judge caring much about that).
The point is that at no time was it necessary for Microsoft to bundle IE with their operating system. They chose to do that. It's possible that they innocently thought that it would improve the user experience. That, or (as I believe the court decided) they were attempting to leverage their monopoly status on the OS to give them a hammer-lock on the burgeoning web industry.
Slashdot Mirror
With all the firefox bashing going on in the comments, I'd like to just chime in with a little positive feedback.
I just installed Firefox Beta 9 on my desktop (after running betas on my laptop for a few months) and it is sweet! It's stable, attractive (well, not so much in XP, but I picked up a skin), and fast. Impressive polish for a Beta release!
I have run Chrome and Opera, but I always come back to Firefox. I've stated my personal preference on a web forum! Woopdeedoo!
Point A: nobody cares about Time Magazine nor their 'Man of the Year' award (in 2006 the 'Man of the Year' was "You")
Point B: nobody likes Mark Zuckerberg.
and (veering off topic)
Point C: I think Assange is in trouble because wikileaks leaked cables the United States declared secret, not because of any leaks about corporations. Now, if those secret cables had contained anything surprising, Assange might've been able to convince people he was a hero. But at best the cables are just background and further confirmation of details that had already been widely reported. So the release of a "treasure trove" of mostly boring documents pissed off the American government, but hasn't made waves beyond that.
If and when Assange and Wikileaks go back to leaking things that embarrass entities other than the United States, and if those things are actually pertinent, maybe Time will make him man of the year next year.
What do your allergies have to do with the development of effective vaccines and their dissemination to a large enough population to effectively eradicate diseases? Or do you think that Measles, Polio, and Tetanus are also caused by bad habits?
Besides that, you may be lucky enough in this stage of your life to have no life-threatening illnesses and the resources to live in a way that's healthy, but a great many people (through no fault of their own) do not have such luxuries. They're sick with real illnesses now. And "Big Pharma" provides millions (billions?) of people medicines that help them live full and active lives.
"Big Pharma" also provides other wacky stuff, manipulates pricing, has a deleterious effect on politics and causes all sorts of other problems. Much the same way most large, profitable industries do. I am not qualified to be the arbiter of whether the lives saved/extended/improved by modern medicine are worth more or less than Big Pharma's societal costs, but in my humble opinion they are.
I hope that you are able to live the rest of your life in complete health, but it's intellectually lazy to assert that the major health problems of others are caused by things they have control over.
in your hypothetical you're still the idiot who drove into a tree, right?
According to the Rockmelt blog
Wow! It unlocks the web experience! That does sound totally awesome!
Wait, what?
All the spending items you mention have some clear immediate need they are addressing. Sending people to Mars does not have a clear immediate need.
I thought you would like to know that I very much enjoyed your post.
Thank you.
First:
radtea never said anything about it being easy to solve the worlds problems
actually that's exactly what he says:
If wiping out hunger, poverty AIDS or terrorism would actually make someone money, then yes, it would be done very rapidly
Second, it doesn't particularly matter to the conversation what radtea is doing offline. I reject the nihilistic world-view of the all-powerful-them vs. the victimized-us espoused in his post.
once people had the illusion of freedom they became much more docile
This statement is so silly; I don't know where to begin. What the hell are you talking about?
I salute you for resisting using all caps and maintaining a conversational tone, at least.
You're positing that all the world's problems are not only solvable, but easily solvable. I'm sorry to break this to you, but humanity is not omnipotent, we're barely competent. And yes, I am including those bad actors you accuse of creating war, disease and starvation in order to profit.
You mention some serious issues, but you're not helping to solve them by imagining a capitalist conspiracy of a mysterious "them" against the righteous "us". You're misdirecting your energies against ghosts and shadows instead of supporting what actually leads to progress: political activity, scientific research, charity and education.
that robot has a gun! we're totally screwed!
I can think of one reason.
(kidding)
do you see how your concept of individual liberty is incompatible with civilization?
you are just being silly.
all rights are positive.
the right to bear arms is positive.
the right to a public education is positive.
the right to be judged by a jury of your peers is positive.
And it's simple enough to show speech as a positive right: If I express my right to free speech at 150dbs, then anyone within hearing distance of my speech is having their right to speech reduced or eliminated.
what do college sports and the movie industry have in common? people get rich off of them but neither officially make money.
assuming the food was free
that's a hell of an assumption.
I wouldn't want to live there
using it as an opportunity for demagoguery
pot, meet anonymous kettle
the article mentions two private companies with some suggestions for how they can make money off the oil spill.
first guy says "buy my sweeper arms" and "don't use dispersant". Even the article admits that they are using his sweeper arms now. the EPA must have given them a waiver! who would have thought they could do that? the utility of dispersants a mile below sea level is a huge question mark. it might turn out to be the best thing BP did. it might turn out to be a huge environmental disaster.
the second guy says "build huge berms". the berms that don't work to stop the oil? the berms that are severely disruptive to the ecosystem? yeah, those. except, you know, larger. I am sure no one in America has thought of making the berms bigger. or maybe scientists examined their proposal and found that the risks far outweighed any benefits.
it's called a waiver. the EPA gives them out all the time.
in fact, remember the "whale" boat, the oil tanker that was going to be the gulf's salvation, but was being held up by all that red tape? They got their waiver (took about a day) and, well, it doesn't work.
But, if it makes you feel better, go ahead and keep railing against the EPA.
Apple went to Verizon first. Verizon said "We'll give you the same cut as we give everyone else" and Jobs said no and went to AT&T who basically gave away the farm to get the iPhone.
the biggest reason there is no Verizon or Spring iPhone right now is that Apple wants more money than either is willing to give. And meanwhile, Apple can continue to demand concessions from AT&T, keeping them cowering in fear of losing that exclusive status.
it's a very cushy situation for Apple, but it has nothing to do with this article.
well said!
Avatar had writers?
Your posts defines two distinct categories: URLs and Search Terms. Most people don't think about those things as separate ideas. They're just means of telling the internet to show a website.
The key distinction between a URL and a search term is that URLs are hard to remember and prone to typos. Search terms are far easier (and tend to be helpful even if you spell them wrong). why would I want to type in "http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/" when I can just type in "krugman" (or "krugrman") and get my daily Keynesian economic analysis that way.
For the browser, the URL and the search term are completely distinct. For an engineer or a software programmer, it's clear why they would have separate fields for entry of one or the other.
But for a user (even a technically savvy user) semantic cleanliness doesn't make any sense and causes more problems than benefits.
the trial was about the linking of the Microsoft's browser to their monopoly OS. that they did it in a way that made it hard to undo does not make it less anti-competitive.
the argument that Microsoft made at the trial was that a web browser was then and always would be a crucial part of the OS. to a technical person, this argument makes no sense -- as it's just a matter of programming. which is why you (and many others) have chosen to defend a weaker formulation of Microsoft's argument (that they only said it would be hard to untangle -- I'm sure they said that as well, but I can't imagine a judge caring much about that).
The point is that at no time was it necessary for Microsoft to bundle IE with their operating system. They chose to do that. It's possible that they innocently thought that it would improve the user experience. That, or (as I believe the court decided) they were attempting to leverage their monopoly status on the OS to give them a hammer-lock on the burgeoning web industry.