Firefox is having it's javascript engine ripped out and replaced with a new one, i believe Adobe contributed the code...
As to providing an API, other browsers have not done so because there is really no pressing need, it is more important from an end user's perspective for browsers to reverse engineer and implement nonstandard proprietary extensions from ie that are actively being used on websites the users want to view. From a developers point of view, that's a lot more work too...
Perhaps it's worth suggesting to mozilla (or helping them) that they create an API in the process of integrating the new javascript engine, so that it's easier to replace/update it in the future...
Obvious, like simply renaming the files? Most systems of this type i've seen don't restrict by file type, just by file extension. If your using an OS that doesn't care about trivial things like file names, then you have no problems.
Microsoft want them to do a costly redesign, which will increase unit cost just to accomodate their software which is obviously more bloated than the software the OLPC already runs. What's worse is they're trying to port an old version of their software to it, while telling everyone else that version is obsolete and shouldn't be used.
OLPC aims to help kids in the third world, by providing them a cheap rugged computer they can learn about and build up a community around. Microsoft just want to get them locked in now, so that when they need support or are looking to buy more machines in the future they have no choice but to pay top dollar to microsoft, or risk losing access to their accumulated data.
The idea behind using open source is that those kids who are naturally technically minded will learn how to support and develop for the system, and create their own local skillbase they can use to support the less technically minded kids around them.
I've rejected several job offers based on contract terms like that, if people keep doing it they will eventually have to change their terms.
Such terms can often decrease the talent pool too, people who are more in demand can be more choosy about their contract terms resulting in companies with such terms only being able to employee lower quality staff: (those in less demand, those who have no intention to invent anything and thus don't care, those who are too careless to read the contract etc)
Don't give her privileged access to any machine... If you screw up your own account, wipe that user's files, the rest of the system should be fine and you can re-create the user.
Spyware removal is flawed, the focus should be on preventing it getting there in the first place. Same with viruses.
The big problem is that people believe the hype.. "Windows $version is the most secure windows ever!" "$program makes your machine secure" Rather than being vigilant, they believe the hype around some product claiming to take away all the security risks.
End users really need managed workstations, managed by people who know what they're doing. Or perhaps kiosk style systems for browsing, booted from non writable media, perhaps with a writable memory card to store your personal settings (with no ability to execute anything on the memory card).
Someone should do that, create a standard for a bootable CD/DVD, which loads settings from a removable media device (usb stick, memory card etc) but strictly prevents any code being executed (mount the removable device noexec?).
Not useless, they serve to scare people into compliance... A lot of people don't realise non compete clauses aren't enforceable, and thus comply with them out of fear instead of doing the proper research. This deters people from leaving, as they fear they couldn't earn the same level of money elsewhere.
In the UK too, such clauses are known as "restriction of trade" and aren't legal... A lot of companies still include them tho, with the intention of scaring people who don't know any better.
That is indeed unfair, but it will be quite happily accepted by people that: a, never intend to produce anything, just coast along doing their 9-5 b, don't read what they sign
I have refused to sign several such contracts, some companies will be flexible about it but some won't... At the very least, you can get the clause narrowed in scope so that it: a, only includes inventions which relate to the company business or the business your employed for b, only count things done on company time (ie things your boss told you to look into, not stuff you came up with on your own)
And is your job core to that business? Or do you do something that's ancillary to the core business of your employer? Or to put it another way, do you think that, with your skillset, you could earn the same or more more working somewhere else that isn't in the same line of business?
If not, then your screwed. Your current company can hold you to ransom, if you decide to leave you can't work in the industry you are trained for and have experience in, you have to do something else for which your not trained, which means you have to start at a lower level earning less money.
Some countries make non compete clauses illegal and unenforceable, but at the very least an employer should be required to compensate you for the duration of any such contract that inhibits your ability to earn a similar or higher wage.
And no sane person would ever sign one... I mean you work in a given industry doing a given job, if you move companies chances are your going to be doing the same or a similar job because thats where your skill set lies. A no compete clause, if even enforceable (they are illegal in some countries, restriction of trade) basically prevents you getting a job doing whatever it is you do for the duration of the clause. Therefore, an employer making you sign such an agreement should have an obligation to pay you for that time your unable to work, tho they could be free to do something else for that time providing it's not overly demanding (relative to your actual job) or demeaning etc..
The idea that a company can say "when you leave us, you cant do the job your trained for and skilled at for a year, you'l have to do an unskilled job for a year on minimum wage" is ridiculous.
I don't use acrobat (osx preview seems much better) and I've never had a PDF which wouldn't display thumbnails, and the thumbnails display a little slowly as you scroll down so i was sure they got auto generated. I do see lots of PDF files without the index tho (the proper textual index) which causes preview to display thumbnails instead of the index down the side.
I would like a say in what i purchase myself, but proprietary products seek to take those choices away from me. If i want to use product X i also have to use products Y and Z because X stores it's data in proprietary formats.
You get no accountability with purchased software, haven't you read the license agreement? If microsoft decide to drop ie, not update it, change it in a fundamental way that breaks your apps - what comeback do you have? IE7 is significantly different to 6 that it breaks some apps, but you still have to support 6 as well because customers running win2k or earlier can't run 7, while customers running vista can't run 6. Firefox won't fundamentally change things as they are working to a defined spec, and if you want to move away from firefox there are other standards compliant alternatives (webkit/safari, opera etc), or you can maintain firefox yourself if it's worth it.
While it is beneficial to be supplied with the same thing for a long time, this is what standards achieve, but you get the added benefit that the suppliers have to compete for your custom, you can push down the prices and make demands. Consider, who is your hardware supplier? How long have you used the same hardware supplier? And how is today's hardware compared to what was available 10 years ago? Is there any reason why you couldn't switch to a different supplier if they offered you a better deal than your current supplier? What hardware supplier do your customers use? Do you try and lock your customers in to a single supplier?
Wouldn't it be good to have the same flexibility over obtaining software as hardware? Companies competing to make better products available at lower cost, and an exit strategy for you if your supplier takes a direction you don't like.
Standards should be a specification that anyone can follow. If whatever specs ie follows were published then they would surely be implemented by other browsers and incorporated into w3c standards, but they aren't published, either because they weren't properly specced out (just hacked together) or because they solely exist to lock people in.
IE exists to try and prevent other people from making their own competing products... What your describing is a lot harder than it should be. Also as to not being forced to use ie, thats also untrue. As you said, you create sites which don't support other browsers, anyone wanting to use those sites is forced to use ie, which is a horrendously outdated inflexible browser that many people can't stand, that also only runs on a single platform that many people also can't stand... Proprietary apps like this that don't follow (or at least sufficiently publish their own) standards are incredibly bad for everyone else (and yes that includes you too, assuming you dont own a large number of microsoft shares or work there).
So what are your products? I assume your products don't compete with microsoft, or you'd realise just how damaging their proprietary lock-in is once they start using it to drive your customers to their (usually inferior) competing product.
Microsoft are not accountable for problems, have you not read the license agreement? They are under no obligation to provide fixes to you or anyone else, it's only the bad press and risk of losing customers that makes them ever fix anything. A lot of microsoft customers would like them to fix ie7 (that is, to support the same standards as everyone else) because it would save them a lot of money when developing web based apps (spread among all the customers, it would save a lot more than it would cost microsoft to fix their bugs).
And you, think of your own business... Stop locking yourself and your customers in to microsoft products, and stop turning away customers who aren't locked in to microsoft. Do you really think it's good business sense to have your business dependent on another corporation that considers you a very small and irrelevant part of their customer base? What happened to the sensible business logic of having a second source for everything you depend on? That's why AMD produces x86 chips you know, because IBM demanded there be a second source of x86 chips before they would commit to it for their PC.
But at least you *can* muck about with firefox's internals, so you can do things which ie's api doesnt cater to.
On the other hand, why would you want to replace the scripting language? Javascript is the only scripting language really being supported. And the reason ie has such an api, is because microsoft were trying to push their proprietary vbscript to replace javascript, not because they actually wanted to make it easy for other people to add new scripting languages.
It's probably worth teaching the students on a selection of software, concentrating on "how to get stuff done" rather than on what particular apps to use.
People who were only taught a single app for a single purpose often have problems adjusting to other programs, they don't understand what features to look for but rather just where to look for them which ofcourse falls over if the software changes, even between different versions of the same application.
It's also worth considering, even if you teach the most up to date and widely used software today... A lot can change very quickly in software, the apps you teach may not be used anymore when your students go out into the world of work, or there may be much newer versions in use. Conversely, many companies keep using even older versions of apps because they still get the job done.
So basically teach the widest selection of apps you can, explain the differences and similarities and focus on the job that needs doing rather than the tools for doing it. Also for anything that is open/free provide your students with a copy of it so they can take it home.
The GPL places no restriction on how you can *use* code you've obtained... It also grants you the right to distribute the code, even modified versions, a right you wouldn't normally have under plain copyright law, but these grants do include some limits.
The GPL may not grant you as much freedom as some other licenses such as BSD, but the way it's structured is fairer overall, and designed to ensure that everyone will always continue to have the same rights to the code.
It's not the pdf generator that makes the thumbnails, its your reader... That said, your reader will only display the thumbnails by default if there isn't a proper index. The index is better, because you get a textual list of the contents of your pdf file and can go straight to the chapter/section you want, but even if you have the index you can display thumbnails instead. I hate pdfs that dont have indexes.
But it does produce really crappy pdf files.. The print subsystem doesn't have the necessary information to create a proper index/toc for the pdf, so you lose the indexing / bookmarks feature... That way you just get thumbnails of each page instead of a proper index of contents down the side of your pdf viewer.
PDF is not intended for reflowing, or display in browsers... It's meant to preserve the layout and content in the originally intended form, and it does that well. As for structure, it does support hyperlinks and a proper table of contents providing you use a half decent tool for creating the PDF... Most PDF files created are done using nasty "print to pdf" hacks so it doesnt have the necessary data to create the index. PDF files created with pdflatex and hyperref look nice and have a nice clickable index at the side of your pdf viewer.
1, It is a standard that anyone can implement. The specification was already open before it became an ISO standard, and many people have already implemented.
2, I would hope so... Glad you mention it, because i have to go clarify this. Even if not, it still serves a useful purpose.
3, i dont know... They voted no with comments didnt they? So surely the comments will be published soon...
Slashdot Mirror
Firefox is having it's javascript engine ripped out and replaced with a new one, i believe Adobe contributed the code...
As to providing an API, other browsers have not done so because there is really no pressing need, it is more important from an end user's perspective for browsers to reverse engineer and implement nonstandard proprietary extensions from ie that are actively being used on websites the users want to view.
From a developers point of view, that's a lot more work too...
Perhaps it's worth suggesting to mozilla (or helping them) that they create an API in the process of integrating the new javascript engine, so that it's easier to replace/update it in the future...
Exactly, so all your drumming training and experience goes to waste, you have to stack shelves for the next 5 years.
What is this sequel you speak of? Can i watch it on my doovde player?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjH9cEoEup8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmyU7T1Rc1s
http://www.ev4.org/wordpress/2007/10/18/sql-is-not-pronounced-sequel-where-the-hell-did-those-vowells-come-from/
Yes, but let's not forget that MS is also multiple sclerosis, a highly unpleasant illness:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_sclerosis
Obvious, like simply renaming the files?
Most systems of this type i've seen don't restrict by file type, just by file extension. If your using an OS that doesn't care about trivial things like file names, then you have no problems.
Microsoft want them to do a costly redesign, which will increase unit cost just to accomodate their software which is obviously more bloated than the software the OLPC already runs.
What's worse is they're trying to port an old version of their software to it, while telling everyone else that version is obsolete and shouldn't be used.
OLPC aims to help kids in the third world, by providing them a cheap rugged computer they can learn about and build up a community around.
Microsoft just want to get them locked in now, so that when they need support or are looking to buy more machines in the future they have no choice but to pay top dollar to microsoft, or risk losing access to their accumulated data.
The idea behind using open source is that those kids who are naturally technically minded will learn how to support and develop for the system, and create their own local skillbase they can use to support the less technically minded kids around them.
And why are they using an envelope format they know to jam automated sorting machines? That's pretty rude if nothing else...
I've rejected several job offers based on contract terms like that, if people keep doing it they will eventually have to change their terms.
Such terms can often decrease the talent pool too, people who are more in demand can be more choosy about their contract terms resulting in companies with such terms only being able to employee lower quality staff: (those in less demand, those who have no intention to invent anything and thus don't care, those who are too careless to read the contract etc)
Don't give her privileged access to any machine...
If you screw up your own account, wipe that user's files, the rest of the system should be fine and you can re-create the user.
Spyware removal is flawed, the focus should be on preventing it getting there in the first place.
Same with viruses.
The big problem is that people believe the hype..
"Windows $version is the most secure windows ever!"
"$program makes your machine secure"
Rather than being vigilant, they believe the hype around some product claiming to take away all the security risks.
End users really need managed workstations, managed by people who know what they're doing.
Or perhaps kiosk style systems for browsing, booted from non writable media, perhaps with a writable memory card to store your personal settings (with no ability to execute anything on the memory card).
Someone should do that, create a standard for a bootable CD/DVD, which loads settings from a removable media device (usb stick, memory card etc) but strictly prevents any code being executed (mount the removable device noexec?).
Not useless, they serve to scare people into compliance...
A lot of people don't realise non compete clauses aren't enforceable, and thus comply with them out of fear instead of doing the proper research.
This deters people from leaving, as they fear they couldn't earn the same level of money elsewhere.
In the UK too, such clauses are known as "restriction of trade" and aren't legal...
A lot of companies still include them tho, with the intention of scaring people who don't know any better.
That is indeed unfair, but it will be quite happily accepted by people that:
a, never intend to produce anything, just coast along doing their 9-5
b, don't read what they sign
I have refused to sign several such contracts, some companies will be flexible about it but some won't... At the very least, you can get the clause narrowed in scope so that it:
a, only includes inventions which relate to the company business or the business your employed for
b, only count things done on company time (ie things your boss told you to look into, not stuff you came up with on your own)
And is your job core to that business? Or do you do something that's ancillary to the core business of your employer?
Or to put it another way, do you think that, with your skillset, you could earn the same or more more working somewhere else that isn't in the same line of business?
If not, then your screwed. Your current company can hold you to ransom, if you decide to leave you can't work in the industry you are trained for and have experience in, you have to do something else for which your not trained, which means you have to start at a lower level earning less money.
Some countries make non compete clauses illegal and unenforceable, but at the very least an employer should be required to compensate you for the duration of any such contract that inhibits your ability to earn a similar or higher wage.
And no sane person would ever sign one...
I mean you work in a given industry doing a given job, if you move companies chances are your going to be doing the same or a similar job because thats where your skill set lies. A no compete clause, if even enforceable (they are illegal in some countries, restriction of trade) basically prevents you getting a job doing whatever it is you do for the duration of the clause.
Therefore, an employer making you sign such an agreement should have an obligation to pay you for that time your unable to work, tho they could be free to do something else for that time providing it's not overly demanding (relative to your actual job) or demeaning etc..
The idea that a company can say "when you leave us, you cant do the job your trained for and skilled at for a year, you'l have to do an unskilled job for a year on minimum wage" is ridiculous.
I don't use acrobat (osx preview seems much better) and I've never had a PDF which wouldn't display thumbnails, and the thumbnails display a little slowly as you scroll down so i was sure they got auto generated.
I do see lots of PDF files without the index tho (the proper textual index) which causes preview to display thumbnails instead of the index down the side.
The following PDF has no TOC, just thumbnails:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Googling_Max-Exercises.pdf
The following PDF has a proper TOC, which is displayed by default instead of thumbnails, but you can still switch to thumbnails if you want:
http://www2.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~piefel/LaTeX-PS/Archive-2004/V12-PDF.pdf
I much prefer the latter...
I would like a say in what i purchase myself, but proprietary products seek to take those choices away from me. If i want to use product X i also have to use products Y and Z because X stores it's data in proprietary formats.
You get no accountability with purchased software, haven't you read the license agreement?
If microsoft decide to drop ie, not update it, change it in a fundamental way that breaks your apps - what comeback do you have? IE7 is significantly different to 6 that it breaks some apps, but you still have to support 6 as well because customers running win2k or earlier can't run 7, while customers running vista can't run 6.
Firefox won't fundamentally change things as they are working to a defined spec, and if you want to move away from firefox there are other standards compliant alternatives (webkit/safari, opera etc), or you can maintain firefox yourself if it's worth it.
While it is beneficial to be supplied with the same thing for a long time, this is what standards achieve, but you get the added benefit that the suppliers have to compete for your custom, you can push down the prices and make demands. Consider, who is your hardware supplier? How long have you used the same hardware supplier? And how is today's hardware compared to what was available 10 years ago?
Is there any reason why you couldn't switch to a different supplier if they offered you a better deal than your current supplier? What hardware supplier do your customers use? Do you try and lock your customers in to a single supplier?
Wouldn't it be good to have the same flexibility over obtaining software as hardware? Companies competing to make better products available at lower cost, and an exit strategy for you if your supplier takes a direction you don't like.
Standards should be a specification that anyone can follow. If whatever specs ie follows were published then they would surely be implemented by other browsers and incorporated into w3c standards, but they aren't published, either because they weren't properly specced out (just hacked together) or because they solely exist to lock people in.
IE exists to try and prevent other people from making their own competing products... What your describing is a lot harder than it should be.
Also as to not being forced to use ie, thats also untrue. As you said, you create sites which don't support other browsers, anyone wanting to use those sites is forced to use ie, which is a horrendously outdated inflexible browser that many people can't stand, that also only runs on a single platform that many people also can't stand... Proprietary apps like this that don't follow (or at least sufficiently publish their own) standards are incredibly bad for everyone else (and yes that includes you too, assuming you dont own a large number of microsoft shares or work there).
So what are your products? I assume your products don't compete with microsoft, or you'd realise just how damaging their proprietary lock-in is once they start using it to drive your customers to their (usually inferior) competing product.
Microsoft are not accountable for problems, have you not read the license agreement? They are under no obligation to provide fixes to you or anyone else, it's only the bad press and risk of losing customers that makes them ever fix anything. A lot of microsoft customers would like them to fix ie7 (that is, to support the same standards as everyone else) because it would save them a lot of money when developing web based apps (spread among all the customers, it would save a lot more than it would cost microsoft to fix their bugs).
And you, think of your own business... Stop locking yourself and your customers in to microsoft products, and stop turning away customers who aren't locked in to microsoft. Do you really think it's good business sense to have your business dependent on another corporation that considers you a very small and irrelevant part of their customer base? What happened to the sensible business logic of having a second source for everything you depend on? That's why AMD produces x86 chips you know, because IBM demanded there be a second source of x86 chips before they would commit to it for their PC.
But at least you *can* muck about with firefox's internals, so you can do things which ie's api doesnt cater to.
On the other hand, why would you want to replace the scripting language? Javascript is the only scripting language really being supported.
And the reason ie has such an api, is because microsoft were trying to push their proprietary vbscript to replace javascript, not because they actually wanted to make it easy for other people to add new scripting languages.
It's probably worth teaching the students on a selection of software, concentrating on "how to get stuff done" rather than on what particular apps to use.
People who were only taught a single app for a single purpose often have problems adjusting to other programs, they don't understand what features to look for but rather just where to look for them which ofcourse falls over if the software changes, even between different versions of the same application.
It's also worth considering, even if you teach the most up to date and widely used software today... A lot can change very quickly in software, the apps you teach may not be used anymore when your students go out into the world of work, or there may be much newer versions in use. Conversely, many companies keep using even older versions of apps because they still get the job done.
So basically teach the widest selection of apps you can, explain the differences and similarities and focus on the job that needs doing rather than the tools for doing it. Also for anything that is open/free provide your students with a copy of it so they can take it home.
The GPL places no restriction on how you can *use* code you've obtained...
It also grants you the right to distribute the code, even modified versions, a right you wouldn't normally have under plain copyright law, but these grants do include some limits.
The GPL may not grant you as much freedom as some other licenses such as BSD, but the way it's structured is fairer overall, and designed to ensure that everyone will always continue to have the same rights to the code.
It's not the pdf generator that makes the thumbnails, its your reader...
That said, your reader will only display the thumbnails by default if there isn't a proper index. The index is better, because you get a textual list of the contents of your pdf file and can go straight to the chapter/section you want, but even if you have the index you can display thumbnails instead. I hate pdfs that dont have indexes.
But it does produce really crappy pdf files..
The print subsystem doesn't have the necessary information to create a proper index/toc for the pdf, so you lose the indexing / bookmarks feature... That way you just get thumbnails of each page instead of a proper index of contents down the side of your pdf viewer.
PDF is not intended for reflowing, or display in browsers... It's meant to preserve the layout and content in the originally intended form, and it does that well. As for structure, it does support hyperlinks and a proper table of contents providing you use a half decent tool for creating the PDF... Most PDF files created are done using nasty "print to pdf" hacks so it doesnt have the necessary data to create the index. PDF files created with pdflatex and hyperref look nice and have a nice clickable index at the side of your pdf viewer.
1, It is a standard that anyone can implement. The specification was already open before it became an ISO standard, and many people have already implemented.
2, I would hope so... Glad you mention it, because i have to go clarify this. Even if not, it still serves a useful purpose.
3, i dont know... They voted no with comments didnt they? So surely the comments will be published soon...