You have to know that more than 25 years later, the Minitel is still alive, and still generating some very nice cash to the (formerly public) French ISP who launched it back then. And guess what : most of the cash comes from porn.
Get lost, you Japanese people ! Surrender to the French Communications Technology !
Why is it such a big deal, that an ISP suddenly throttles bandwith for a specific protocol ? I would understand the matter if Comcast was the only ISP in the USA, but there are probably tens or even hundreds.
In most countries, customers have a right (and use it all the time) to say a big F___ YOU to a company they pay for a service, if the service they subscribed for doesn't meet their needs anymore. Why wouldn't this be true for the USA ? You know, the old "Customer is king" thing...
It never stagnated. They had IE4, then 4.1, then 5, then 5.5. And that's when FF appeared and took a tiny market share. That market share being mostly people that have no interest in MS technologies, and wouldn't generate any cash to begin with.
The IE dev team has always been a small team. The browser evolved pretty slow, and never brought ground-breaking features, at least not after IE4. You know, if MS really wanted to make IE a killer app, they have the people, the technology and the cash to do it in a matter of months. It was just never needed to.
Internet Explorer is the platform of choice for the millions of web applications every MS-centric companies develop with Visual Studio.Net...It's also a key component (not exactly as a web-browser, but as a versatile display tool) in most modern MS OSes. So even if IE doesn't make any cash directly, it makes a lot of indirect cash, and ties users to MS technologies suite.
The fact many people use IE at home is the cherry on top of the cake, but it's not the main target, and it hasn't been since MS won that first web-browsers war with IE4.
...perhaps because it's not a threat ?
The linux end-users market share is a tiny one, and MS just doesn't want to spend money where there is basically none to be made.
I bought mine without being too sure it would be a good product, but it ended up being an amazing SD card. I'm surprised the built-in USB hasn't become the de facto standard in SD, seeing how usefull it is.
I don't see the point of adding Wi-Fi to a SD card. It takes 2 seconds to plug your digital camera to a computer (or a TV). And seeing how Wi-Fi lacks security, I don't want this new thing to become a standard:/ I know I wouldn't buy one, may it be for $100 or even cheaper.
Microsoft was already a big company in 1991. I don't think this can be called a "change of heart". It's closer to an "adaptation to the market", because they're not the only company to patent a wide range of processes and concepts, and because that's basically related to their business, as unfair and stupid as it seems.
The problem is with patents and the patents laws, not with the companies who ask for them and obtain them. You won't fix that problem by forbidding Microsoft or Verizon or any big company from obtaining more patents, but by changing the policies of the patent office.
All the software you list, that take more than 50% of your CPU cycles, fight a human problem. Being the will of some people to hack your system, display ads to your eyes, have you read spam or things like that.
It's not an easy problem to solve, because the source is the human nature and the will to make more money, get more power, annoy more people, you name it...
Thanks for your answers.
Well, when I think about it, Europe isn't exempt from what you explain...it's just 10-15 years late I guess:/ The recent Presidential elections in France, looked a lot more like a TV show, with political projects and ideas being hidden under a huge pile of show-biz-like partisanism. I kinda fear for our future:(
I was going to post something about the United States citizen being responsible for the current US government, but then I remembered most of the US citizens didn't actually vote for them:/ Reading that kind of news make the USA look too close to a dictatorship.
I honnestly don't intend to flame, and I admit that everything isn't perfect in Europe countries, but as a European citizen, I don't understand how US citizen can be so unable to push their government down, or force it to change that kind of decisions.
If you really think that what makes FireFox 1.5 and 2.0 slow and resource-hungry is the current bookmarking system, you should put your SQLite and XML knowledge aside and come back to more basic stuff =)
The point of my initial message is that many people among the FireFox user-base would prefer having a lightning-fast and memory-thin FireFox with the feature of 1.5 or 2.0, better than a big fat browser full of features that most people don't even need, and won't use at all.
Honnestly, I would pay for a lightweight version of FireFox.
Firefox users want a browser that displays webpages. A browser that is fast. A browser that doesn't hog the whole computer's resources. A browser that never leak hundreds of megabytes after an hour of usage.
Adding a whole new bookmarks system is nice, but does the user-base need it ? Or at least does it need it more than it needs a stable and fast browser ? I honnestly don't think so, and I'm sad seeing Firefox going farther and farther from it's initial goals as an Open Source project:(
The data and pictures used by Google to render maps in Google Earth have been bought by Google. Pretty sure Military Departments can buy these too, and I wouldn't even be surprised if they had access to even more detailed maps and data.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to know that more than 25 years later, the Minitel is still alive, and still generating some very nice cash to the (formerly public) French ISP who launched it back then. And guess what : most of the cash comes from porn.
Get lost, you Japanese people ! Surrender to the French Communications Technology !
Why is it such a big deal, that an ISP suddenly throttles bandwith for a specific protocol ? I would understand the matter if Comcast was the only ISP in the USA, but there are probably tens or even hundreds.
In most countries, customers have a right (and use it all the time) to say a big F___ YOU to a company they pay for a service, if the service they subscribed for doesn't meet their needs anymore. Why wouldn't this be true for the USA ? You know, the old "Customer is king" thing...
You have a solid point. Everyone pay attention to parent, and stop submitting that kind of useless stories.
It never stagnated. They had IE4, then 4.1, then 5, then 5.5. And that's when FF appeared and took a tiny market share. That market share being mostly people that have no interest in MS technologies, and wouldn't generate any cash to begin with. The IE dev team has always been a small team. The browser evolved pretty slow, and never brought ground-breaking features, at least not after IE4. You know, if MS really wanted to make IE a killer app, they have the people, the technology and the cash to do it in a matter of months. It was just never needed to.
Internet Explorer is the platform of choice for the millions of web applications every MS-centric companies develop with Visual Studio.Net...It's also a key component (not exactly as a web-browser, but as a versatile display tool) in most modern MS OSes. So even if IE doesn't make any cash directly, it makes a lot of indirect cash, and ties users to MS technologies suite.
The fact many people use IE at home is the cherry on top of the cake, but it's not the main target, and it hasn't been since MS won that first web-browsers war with IE4.
...perhaps because it's not a threat ? The linux end-users market share is a tiny one, and MS just doesn't want to spend money where there is basically none to be made.
You know, this uhhh...this good friend of mine...well...he said they worked pretty well ! :)
I bought mine without being too sure it would be a good product, but it ended up being an amazing SD card. I'm surprised the built-in USB hasn't become the de facto standard in SD, seeing how usefull it is.
:/ I know I wouldn't buy one, may it be for $100 or even cheaper.
I don't see the point of adding Wi-Fi to a SD card. It takes 2 seconds to plug your digital camera to a computer (or a TV). And seeing how Wi-Fi lacks security, I don't want this new thing to become a standard
Please, for the love of god, don't let it be a First Person Shooter :/
Microsoft was already a big company in 1991. I don't think this can be called a "change of heart". It's closer to an "adaptation to the market", because they're not the only company to patent a wide range of processes and concepts, and because that's basically related to their business, as unfair and stupid as it seems. The problem is with patents and the patents laws, not with the companies who ask for them and obtain them. You won't fix that problem by forbidding Microsoft or Verizon or any big company from obtaining more patents, but by changing the policies of the patent office.
All the software you list, that take more than 50% of your CPU cycles, fight a human problem. Being the will of some people to hack your system, display ads to your eyes, have you read spam or things like that.
It's not an easy problem to solve, because the source is the human nature and the will to make more money, get more power, annoy more people, you name it...
It could also be somewhat visible. Yes, some attacks are somewhat visible indeed.
Thanks for your answers. Well, when I think about it, Europe isn't exempt from what you explain...it's just 10-15 years late I guess :/ The recent Presidential elections in France, looked a lot more like a TV show, with political projects and ideas being hidden under a huge pile of show-biz-like partisanism. I kinda fear for our future :(
I was going to post something about the United States citizen being responsible for the current US government, but then I remembered most of the US citizens didn't actually vote for them :/ Reading that kind of news make the USA look too close to a dictatorship.
I honnestly don't intend to flame, and I admit that everything isn't perfect in Europe countries, but as a European citizen, I don't understand how US citizen can be so unable to push their government down, or force it to change that kind of decisions.
If you really think that what makes FireFox 1.5 and 2.0 slow and resource-hungry is the current bookmarking system, you should put your SQLite and XML knowledge aside and come back to more basic stuff =)
A bookmark list is no more than a list of urls stored in a file. The folders hierarchy is no big deal either. A very good example of feature that should be kept as simple as possible. Several users commented on their use of a roaming bookmarks service (del.icio.us and others), and it's actually a way more interesting feature to integrate to FF, than a shiny auto-bookmark-store-o-matic© that will be fun to program, but won't make a difference to the end-user.
The point of my initial message is that many people among the FireFox user-base would prefer having a lightning-fast and memory-thin FireFox with the feature of 1.5 or 2.0, better than a big fat browser full of features that most people don't even need, and won't use at all.
Honnestly, I would pay for a lightweight version of FireFox.
Firefox users want a browser that displays webpages. A browser that is fast. A browser that doesn't hog the whole computer's resources. A browser that never leak hundreds of megabytes after an hour of usage.
:(
Adding a whole new bookmarks system is nice, but does the user-base need it ? Or at least does it need it more than it needs a stable and fast browser ? I honnestly don't think so, and I'm sad seeing Firefox going farther and farther from it's initial goals as an Open Source project
Pwned.
He posted a second entry, where he states they changed their mind.
I know for a fact that 91% of the people on Slashdot are 24 year old from Kentucky.
The data and pictures used by Google to render maps in Google Earth have been bought by Google. Pretty sure Military Departments can buy these too, and I wouldn't even be surprised if they had access to even more detailed maps and data.
...till the day they add GoogleAds to every page made with this tool.
User is ThatGeek. And I'm too tired to post a comment :)
I just noticed that /. user's signature, in a comment to a previous story. I think it can help.