Any examples to back that statement up? Supposedly releasing the source code for an app while secretly making binaries of the app from different source would be very evil indeed.
By definition the world is mostly made up of average people.
I'm guessing you weren't a math major! If 50% of the world were seven feet tall and the other 50% were five feet tall then the average height would be six feet, but that doesn't necessarily mean that most people are average (six feet tall).
You are confusing free speech, which is a constitutionally protected right, with the "right" to be heard by others. Such a right does not exist, nor should it. It is your responsibility that your voice is actually heard.
My thoughts exactly. Just another form of expression of a basic truth. The fact that a key investor was a former Microsofter only makes this a little sweeter. Consider the words of the great philosophers Mr. T and Nelson.
Well put. I know that this is people's livelihoods we're talking about here but this guy should know as well as anyone that when you partner with Microsoft you end up being screwed in the end.
Um, sure, they are both proprietary, but Flash is much less so. For example, Flash has a 100% supported plugin for Linux and Mac whereas Silverlight doesn't
And by the way, this statement is laughable. First of all there are no degrees of proprietary. It is or it isn't. Secondly, releasing software on Linux doesn't make it non-proprietary. Oracle runs on Linux, is it "much less proprietary" too?
Flash also has a work in progress OSS implementation called Gnash.
Holy crap, please tell me that you've ever actually used Gnash or swfdec before claiming that any "work in progress OSS implementation" of Flash is anywhere close to being viable. And Moonlight is officially supported by Microsoft, whereas Adobe doesn't support any open implementation of Flash.
Not trying to be a Microsoft apologist here, just trying to dispel the notion that Flash is more open than Silverlight. They are both closed, proprietary platforms that will hopefully be relegated to near-obsolescence in due time.
As industry devils go, Flash has fairly low levels of evil. It's proven, it fills a niche, it works, and while it's not wide open, it's not exactly locked shut either.
It's a proprietary format entirely controlled by one company that has reached ubiquitous status by being the only viable solution for several problems for far too long. And as for being proven, you've obviously never tried to watch Flash videos on 64-bit Linux. Only now do they have an alpha version of a native x86_64 player and it's been in alpha since late last year. How terrible can their code possibly be if it takes this long to recompile it for 64 bits?
You're making the false assertion here that this is between Flash and Silverlight. Playing videos and drawing vector graphics are things that should be done in the browser and which have technologies on the way that will allow just that, so that one company no longer has absolute control over who can do those things. By apologizing for Adobe and their ineptitude in making Flash a true cross-platform technology you harm that effort.
And yes it is officially supported, on the other hand Moonlight, the OSS Slilverlight implementation which is the only way to get it to work on Linux really has no backing from MS
Nobackingfrom Microsoft? You sure about that? I would call releasing their video codecs for use by Moonlight and publishing a covenant not to sue Moonlight users to be pretty far from "no backing".
Granted, this is Microsoft's version of playing nice so of course the whole covenant issue is really just a wedge to drive portions of the OSS community against each other, but I think it's difficult to assert that Adobe is being more open than Microsoft here.
When it comes down to it, both companies are going to be only as open as absolutely necessary to help promote their format. Of course hopefully SVG and HTML5 features like <video> and <canvas> tags etc. will make the whole point moot if all the non-IE browsers can gain critical mass to force Microsoft into supporting them. Then we'll see both companies in the position Sun is now with Java: wishing they had truly opened up their formats before it was 10 years too late.
This is the exact attitude that pushes people away from FOSS in the first place.
It is almost impossible to get a real answer from people with experience when all you get in return is "RTFM n00b."
Then good riddance. As the maintainer of several open source projects, I am constantly amazed by the number of people who ask a question on a mailing list that is answered in the top 5 questions of the FAQ.
People who expect not only to have amazing software written for them for free but also to be spoon-fed every step of the way don't do anyone any favors, so why should FOSS authors worry if they leave?
Google does not have all of the answers. It has a wealth of information, but sometimes no answers.
If Google doesn't have the answer, then install the software yourself, try it out, and then blog about what you found out. That's at most a half-day proposition for most FOSS projects. Not only will go gain good experience, but others will benefit from your efforts and you'll add to the discussion.
You don't have to be a developer to contribute to the FOSS community. Even if the only thing you contribute is your user experience or a simple "thanks", that's better than being a leech who expects someone else to do all the work. The OP didn't ask a single question that couldn't be answered by 30 minutes of Googling and another 4 hours of kicking the tires on some software.
This BS has got to stop. I'm going to go and burn some karma, but websites should not be pulling April Fools jokes a day or two early. Why? Because sarcasm is lost in text. The humor in this article was not obvious that I ended up thinking it was true. Haha I was fooled! On march 31st! Stop the jokes when they're not supposed to be done. This article would have been easier to spot in the late 90s with IE 4 and 5. Nowadays they're doing better.
So you actually thought that an upcoming release of IE with Firefox extension support, multiple rendering engines, full CS3 support, and an entirely rewritten javascript engine, all by this summer, sounded reasonable? That such a release would only be considered a.1 version? That "server-side code decompilation" is even possible? It should have been obvious by the 2nd paragraph that the article was bogus, regardless of the date.
I might feel sorry for you if I weren't from Indiana. You may not know what date it is, but unlike us, at least you can be relatively certain what time of day it is at any given moment!
Consider PNG. It's a great format, and I prefer it over GIF whenever possible, but the fact remains that by the time real PNG support got widespread enough matter, the GIF patents had expired and so the original point of PNG was moot.
Really? Once the GIF patents expired, they magically started supporting greater than 256 colors with 8-bit transparency? Forget the patents, PNG is a superior format in nearly every respect, there's nothing moot about that.
Plus, I really enjoy using PNG images on my websites, because IE6 doesn't handle the transparency correctly, so it reminds all those remaining IE6 users that they're using a shitty browser. When they complain about the page not rendering correctly I can simply point out that all other browsers are capable of displaying them as intended.
This has been my answer for years, any time someone tries to ridicule my subcompact car:
"You know how some guys get big SUVs or sports cars to compensate for their sexual inadequacy? I'm doing the same thing, just the other way 'round."
Lemme guess, after that you try to talk them into having sex in a very uncomfortable place?
the use-case is probably some kind of lock-in, either now or later. or licensing fees. or NEW fees.
Lock-in? New fees? C'mon, let's get serious. They're giving away the encoder for free on their website! Do you really think that the company that owns the MP3 format would just let this new format, crappy though it is, be used by enough people so that it becomes a de-facto standard and then decide to start enforcing their IP and try to wring money out of something that already has numerous superior free implementations?
The commercial routers don't have this option. Um like D-link, Linksys, etc. Unfortunately they are the majority of home/small enterprise routers But this would be the trick to use.
Except anyone who's knowledgeable enough to set up a private/public key based ssh server on their router would have ditched that crippled factory default firmware in the first place and installed something more advanced like Tomato, which does have this feature.
If you allow SSH access from the wide internet and you allow passwords, you are probably still vulnerable.
Really, just use SSH with private/public keys and you'll be okay.
Another alternative is to close port 22 and use a non-standard, high-numbered port instead. Not as secure but most automated attacks don't scan all 65536 ports looking for an open one. If I disable passwords I'm always afraid that the one time I really need to get into my LAN will be the one time I don't have my private keys with me.
Either way, holding AMD in violation of their agreement means they would effectively forfeit 64-bit licensing rights as well, and that makes no sense for them.
Says you! That Itanium line is going to just take off any day now, and then AMD and their crazy backwards-compatible technology will be left out in the cold!
US national debt decreased yearly from WW II until Reagan hit in 1980. He doubled it, Bush I increased it some more, and it leveled off under Clinton. Bush II doubled or tripled it. Obama is going to increase it, but mostly to repair the damage done by Bush II.
Yeah, because we all know that the President has complete and final budget-setting powers, right? Who controlled Congress under Reagan again?
I can't believe Google will let the contract expire.
They won't. This is how CEOs of companies communicate with each other: through the media. These statements are for Google's benefit only. She is telling them: don't think about trying to use Chrome as leverage in our search agreements, because we have plenty of other options. Why the hell else would she make that "blank check" comment? It serves absolutely no other purpose than sending a message to Google.
Another example of this was Steve Jobs' "offhanded" remark that iPhones would never run Flash. He was sending Adobe a message: we don't need you, so don't even think of trying to charge us to put your "ubiquitous" runtime on our phones. We'll take it for free though, thank you very much.
And it really is much better and right on par with Firefox... EXCEPT I can't do online banking with Wachovia, and SLASHDOT corrcetly. I have to open a new tab to reply, or read a hidden comment. And to comment I have to use Firefox. Which is what I am using now.
You have an interesting definition of "on par with".
Slashdot Mirror
Bait and switch would be just like these guys!
Any examples to back that statement up? Supposedly releasing the source code for an app while secretly making binaries of the app from different source would be very evil indeed.
By definition the world is mostly made up of average people.
I'm guessing you weren't a math major! If 50% of the world were seven feet tall and the other 50% were five feet tall then the average height would be six feet, but that doesn't necessarily mean that most people are average (six feet tall).
You are confusing free speech, which is a constitutionally protected right, with the "right" to be heard by others. Such a right does not exist, nor should it. It is your responsibility that your voice is actually heard.
My thoughts exactly. Just another form of expression of a basic truth. The fact that a key investor was a former Microsofter only makes this a little sweeter. Consider the words of the great philosophers Mr. T and Nelson.
Well put. I know that this is people's livelihoods we're talking about here but this guy should know as well as anyone that when you partner with Microsoft you end up being screwed in the end.
So basically what you're saying is that the MMk1 is the first computer that could run:
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!!1"
20 GOTO 10
Um, sure, they are both proprietary, but Flash is much less so. For example, Flash has a 100% supported plugin for Linux and Mac whereas Silverlight doesn't
And by the way, this statement is laughable. First of all there are no degrees of proprietary. It is or it isn't. Secondly, releasing software on Linux doesn't make it non-proprietary. Oracle runs on Linux, is it "much less proprietary" too?
Flash also has a work in progress OSS implementation called Gnash.
Holy crap, please tell me that you've ever actually used Gnash or swfdec before claiming that any "work in progress OSS implementation" of Flash is anywhere close to being viable. And Moonlight is officially supported by Microsoft, whereas Adobe doesn't support any open implementation of Flash.
Not trying to be a Microsoft apologist here, just trying to dispel the notion that Flash is more open than Silverlight. They are both closed, proprietary platforms that will hopefully be relegated to near-obsolescence in due time.
... as they say.
As industry devils go, Flash has fairly low levels of evil. It's proven, it fills a niche, it works, and while it's not wide open, it's not exactly locked shut either.
It's a proprietary format entirely controlled by one company that has reached ubiquitous status by being the only viable solution for several problems for far too long. And as for being proven, you've obviously never tried to watch Flash videos on 64-bit Linux. Only now do they have an alpha version of a native x86_64 player and it's been in alpha since late last year. How terrible can their code possibly be if it takes this long to recompile it for 64 bits?
You're making the false assertion here that this is between Flash and Silverlight. Playing videos and drawing vector graphics are things that should be done in the browser and which have technologies on the way that will allow just that, so that one company no longer has absolute control over who can do those things. By apologizing for Adobe and their ineptitude in making Flash a true cross-platform technology you harm that effort.
And yes it is officially supported, on the other hand Moonlight, the OSS Slilverlight implementation which is the only way to get it to work on Linux really has no backing from MS
No backing from Microsoft? You sure about that? I would call releasing their video codecs for use by Moonlight and publishing a covenant not to sue Moonlight users to be pretty far from "no backing".
Granted, this is Microsoft's version of playing nice so of course the whole covenant issue is really just a wedge to drive portions of the OSS community against each other, but I think it's difficult to assert that Adobe is being more open than Microsoft here.
When it comes down to it, both companies are going to be only as open as absolutely necessary to help promote their format. Of course hopefully SVG and HTML5 features like <video> and <canvas> tags etc. will make the whole point moot if all the non-IE browsers can gain critical mass to force Microsoft into supporting them. Then we'll see both companies in the position Sun is now with Java: wishing they had truly opened up their formats before it was 10 years too late.
This is the exact attitude that pushes people away from FOSS in the first place.
It is almost impossible to get a real answer from people with experience when all you get in return is "RTFM n00b."
Then good riddance. As the maintainer of several open source projects, I am constantly amazed by the number of people who ask a question on a mailing list that is answered in the top 5 questions of the FAQ.
People who expect not only to have amazing software written for them for free but also to be spoon-fed every step of the way don't do anyone any favors, so why should FOSS authors worry if they leave?
Google does not have all of the answers. It has a wealth of information, but sometimes no answers.
If Google doesn't have the answer, then install the software yourself, try it out, and then blog about what you found out. That's at most a half-day proposition for most FOSS projects. Not only will go gain good experience, but others will benefit from your efforts and you'll add to the discussion.
You don't have to be a developer to contribute to the FOSS community. Even if the only thing you contribute is your user experience or a simple "thanks", that's better than being a leech who expects someone else to do all the work. The OP didn't ask a single question that couldn't be answered by 30 minutes of Googling and another 4 hours of kicking the tires on some software.
As lame as the rest of the article was, their "Mixx promotion algorithm" was good for a chuckle.
This BS has got to stop. I'm going to go and burn some karma, but websites should not be pulling April Fools jokes a day or two early. Why? Because sarcasm is lost in text. The humor in this article was not obvious that I ended up thinking it was true. Haha I was fooled! On march 31st! Stop the jokes when they're not supposed to be done. This article would have been easier to spot in the late 90s with IE 4 and 5. Nowadays they're doing better.
So you actually thought that an upcoming release of IE with Firefox extension support, multiple rendering engines, full CS3 support, and an entirely rewritten javascript engine, all by this summer, sounded reasonable? That such a release would only be considered a .1 version? That "server-side code decompilation" is even possible? It should have been obvious by the 2nd paragraph that the article was bogus, regardless of the date.
29th/Nov?
Wow - that's my birthday as well. Cool coincidence.
Not really.
Oh you think that is confusing? Throughout Canada we use all of them! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_by_country#Canada
I might feel sorry for you if I weren't from Indiana. You may not know what date it is, but unlike us, at least you can be relatively certain what time of day it is at any given moment!
Are people going to be able to access Skype? How loud will they be allowed to talk before I am allowed to garotte them with my $4 headphones?
The In-Flight Cell-Phone Ban
The FCC is currently reviewing its ban on the use of cell phones during flights, but many passengers say they like the restriction. What do you think?
"If they lift the ban on cell-phone use, they better lift the ban on passengers beating the shit out of each other, too."
Consider PNG. It's a great format, and I prefer it over GIF whenever possible, but the fact remains that by the time real PNG support got widespread enough matter, the GIF patents had expired and so the original point of PNG was moot.
Really? Once the GIF patents expired, they magically started supporting greater than 256 colors with 8-bit transparency? Forget the patents, PNG is a superior format in nearly every respect, there's nothing moot about that.
Plus, I really enjoy using PNG images on my websites, because IE6 doesn't handle the transparency correctly, so it reminds all those remaining IE6 users that they're using a shitty browser. When they complain about the page not rendering correctly I can simply point out that all other browsers are capable of displaying them as intended.
This has been my answer for years, any time someone tries to ridicule my subcompact car: "You know how some guys get big SUVs or sports cars to compensate for their sexual inadequacy? I'm doing the same thing, just the other way 'round."
Lemme guess, after that you try to talk them into having sex in a very uncomfortable place?
Really, I can't tell if you have successfully trolled me or honestly didn't remember that...
Wasn't trying to troll, but I thought the sarcasm was pretty obvious when I wrote it. Guess it doesn't come across as well as I thought :)
the use-case is probably some kind of lock-in, either now or later. or licensing fees. or NEW fees.
Lock-in? New fees? C'mon, let's get serious. They're giving away the encoder for free on their website! Do you really think that the company that owns the MP3 format would just let this new format, crappy though it is, be used by enough people so that it becomes a de-facto standard and then decide to start enforcing their IP and try to wring money out of something that already has numerous superior free implementations?
The commercial routers don't have this option. Um like D-link, Linksys, etc. Unfortunately they are the majority of home/small enterprise routers But this would be the trick to use.
Except anyone who's knowledgeable enough to set up a private/public key based ssh server on their router would have ditched that crippled factory default firmware in the first place and installed something more advanced like Tomato, which does have this feature.
If you allow SSH access from the wide internet and you allow passwords, you are probably still vulnerable.
Really, just use SSH with private/public keys and you'll be okay.
Another alternative is to close port 22 and use a non-standard, high-numbered port instead. Not as secure but most automated attacks don't scan all 65536 ports looking for an open one. If I disable passwords I'm always afraid that the one time I really need to get into my LAN will be the one time I don't have my private keys with me.
Either way, holding AMD in violation of their agreement means they would effectively forfeit 64-bit licensing rights as well, and that makes no sense for them.
Says you! That Itanium line is going to just take off any day now, and then AMD and their crazy backwards-compatible technology will be left out in the cold!
US national debt decreased yearly from WW II until Reagan hit in 1980. He doubled it, Bush I increased it some more, and it leveled off under Clinton. Bush II doubled or tripled it. Obama is going to increase it, but mostly to repair the damage done by Bush II.
Yeah, because we all know that the President has complete and final budget-setting powers, right? Who controlled Congress under Reagan again?
I can't believe Google will let the contract expire.
They won't. This is how CEOs of companies communicate with each other: through the media. These statements are for Google's benefit only. She is telling them: don't think about trying to use Chrome as leverage in our search agreements, because we have plenty of other options. Why the hell else would she make that "blank check" comment? It serves absolutely no other purpose than sending a message to Google.
Another example of this was Steve Jobs' "offhanded" remark that iPhones would never run Flash. He was sending Adobe a message: we don't need you, so don't even think of trying to charge us to put your "ubiquitous" runtime on our phones. We'll take it for free though, thank you very much.
And it really is much better and right on par with Firefox ... EXCEPT I can't do online banking with Wachovia, and SLASHDOT corrcetly. I have to open a new tab to reply, or read a hidden comment. And to comment I have to use Firefox. Which is what I am using now.
You have an interesting definition of "on par with".