Maybe, but your post certainly doesn't support that remark.
"Yes, it has bugs.Yes, it sometimes uses huge amounts of memory.BUT so does every other peice of software ever written."
So because other programs are buggy that excuses Firefox's bugginess, and it deserves to be #1 even if it is just as bad as other programs when it comes to crashing and gobbling up memory? Strange logic.
"And I think what most people miss while comparing Firefox to Opera or IE is that Firefox is a much younger project than the others."
It is you who are missing the point, actually. Firefox as project is relatively young, but it is built on years old technology. It is the true successor of Netscape. In fact, it is based on the open sourced next generation Netscape code.
As a program, Firefox is built on mature technology, and it's had things go smoothly because older browsers have tried and failed various approaches, and therefore Firefox could easily learn from these mistakes and avoid them.
"Opera has been around for a number of years and has only just started to add better features."
You have got to be kidding me!
If you look at the changelog for Firefox 1.5, guess which browser had most of those features first? Opera.
Also, Opera was one of the first (if not the first) browser with MDI. Popup blocking was also built into Opera before anything else. And the search field to the right of the address field in Firefox and IE7? Yet another Opera invetion from ages ago. Not to mention things like sessions, that let you continue where you left off, and so on. Bookmark nicknames? Opera. Easy deleting of private data? Opera.
Heck, even the built in e-mail client in Opera was lightyears ahead of others, like Gmail, which borrowed Opera's concept of virtual folders/labels.
I'm not even going to go into Opera for mobile phones...
You obviously don't know much about Opera, or you wouldn't have made a remark like that.
"So if you equate the amount of time these products have been in the market and the innovation/features they have been able to produce...Firefox wins hands down.Given a little time more, I dont think there will be any comparison to it."
So what exactly has Firefox brought to the table in terms of innovation? Silly me, I thought Firefox was supposed to be a lean and mean browser, not a feature beast!
So how exactly does Firefox win "hands down"?
Also, I've already answered the "amount of time" comment. Obviously Firefox has a huge advantage, in that it could start off clean, and look at older browsers to cherry-pick features and functionality. It doesn't have to make all the mistakes older browsers have made. Then again, it has made serious mistakes, some of which are being fixed or have been (extensions support).
"All this without considering the financial aspects of software development(IE & Opera are commericial FOR PROFIT projects)."
So you think Firefox created itself for free? That no one has paid any money for it?
Let me give you another history lesson. Mozilla was funded by AOL, and then AOL gave it a few millions in cash and sent it on its way. In other words, AOL's customers paid for it. Now others started donating to Mozilla - Google, Sun, Nokia, and so on. Now their customers had to pay the bill for Mozilla's development.
Now Mozilla has created its own corporation - the Mozilla Corporation - because they want to be able to make more money.
If you think Firefox or Mozilla has not had to consider the financial aspects of software development, you are dead wrong.
The only way you could defeat others was if your arguments actually made sense, which they don't. Actually, your complete lack of anything resembling proper arguments pretty much makes sure that you always end up looking the fool.
Sorry, but as I said, you lose again! Incredible how easy it is to flop you around like a rag doll.
Your arguments are always fallacious in nature, and you are simply helping me emphasize this point by constantly writing your useless and inane replies when someone forces you into a corner. Which happens a lot.
Ah, the irony of CyricZ whining about ad hominem attacks and then proceeding with his own.
You really don't have any proper arguments ever, do you?
Your reply didn't have anything to do with what I actually wrote. Instead, you throw out straw men like there's no tomorrow. Basically, that's how all your replies go: You misrepresent what the person said and attack that, and then declare victory when people rightly declare you to be the moron that you are.
Anyway, your social antenna seems to be completely broken. You are having problems relating to people even online, and you spend all your time spamming Slashdot with useless posts. I feel sorry for you.
"Had you bothered to follow the development of Opera and Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox, you would obviously have seen where the features were first implemented: Netscape, Mozilla, or Firefox."
You obviously didn't read my post, because I clearly talked about "innovative features". Neither iCab nor the Winamp browser have defined the modern browser the way Opera has.
What Netscape did years ago is basically irrelevant in this discussion, because the other person brought up a couple of obscure browsers that haven't really done anything like Opera has. Most of the things we take for granted in modern browsers (popup blocking, the standard browser search field, privacy controls, sessions, bookmark nicknames, etc.) were invented by Opera.
It's fun to notice how many years ago was the last time anything that had anything to do with Netscape was innovative. Mozilla has certainly always been a follower and always trying to catch up with Opera, as is apparent from its blatant ripoff of Opera's features.
Sadly they are unable to do it properly, so it ends up as a rather bloated software package. 5 MB for a plain browser without anything else?!
"Mosaic and Netscape were also highly innovative in providing a cross-platform browser, long before Opera."
Again, they are irrelevant because they are old, and they never "innovated" anything beyond creating some of the first browsers and some common features. Just like Firefox doesn't innovate, but just keeps copying Opera. Just look at the new features in Firefox 1.5. Guess where most of those were borrowed from? That's right, Opera has had most of those for years!
"Netscape pioneered the concept of providing the integrated browser/email package"
Actually, Opera had a newsreader and e-mail client back when the first version was released in the mid-nineties.
Also, integration was a known concept ages before Netscape did it.
"Even today the Netscape 4.80 email client is superior to that of the latest Opera releases."
I would have to disagree with you there. The e-mail client in Opera is what Google based their Gmail (officially the best webmail service in existence) functionality on, and even back when Opera had a normal folder based e-mail client, it was better than Netscape's. I used to be a Netscape user, and the e-mail client sucks badly. It can't even compare to Opera.
Haven't we been through this before? Quite a while ago Microsoft bragged about using XML as its new Office format. It turned out to be XML with some proprietary additions and such. Is this the very same format, only now Microsoft is claiming it to be open again?
To clarify: the announcement on the stock exchange was not meant to generate PR or get the attention of the media. It was meant to inform current and potential investors of its future plans, and how it intends to make money. This is necessary knowledge for people to decide whether or not they want to invest in the company. And again, lying on the stock exchange and misleading people there will get you in big trouble.
That is not a marketing guy, and the actual claims are from an announcement on the Oslo Stock Exchange, where it is illegal to lie about these things. If they didn't think that this would lead to increased revenues they could not have made an official statement about it on the stock exchange in the first place.
Norway smacks down hard on companies that try to play the market, and Opera Software is also known to be honest and modest. The original owners could have sold out years ago and would have been filthy rich, but they are still running the company themselves.
What is "much profit", and what does this have to do with your initial claims that "Opera has messed up" and that they have never made money on the desktop? They've been expanding a lot the last few years to keep up with demand, and that costs money of course. That doesn't mean that the income has been going up too.
Opera has made plenty enough profit to survive and experience constant growth for many years.
"Internet devices are their niche, and that's what brings in the larger percentage of revenue. And that percentage is increasing. (over 80% now)"
Now, yes, because they just eleased the desktop version for free without ads. I've already told you about that. Please pay attention.
"And how would that work?"
You get lots of users searching through Google (a huge part of the desktop revenues in the past), even more now that Opera is free without ads, and combined with a better search deal with Google, you have the potential of a lot of money flowing in.
"What they are doing is basically recognizing that they are not going to make money from the desktop browser (while the biggest competitors give it away for free). So they release it for free and get a lot of good PR. And leverage that PR for the internet device markets."
You are wrong, as I have already told you. They expect to make a lot more money on the desktop side now. They get better PR and they make more money.
You are wrong, actually. About a third of their revenues came from desktop browsers until recently. Now that they've made it free without ads they expect to make even more money on the desktop.
"Why not start talking about iCab or winamp's built in browser?"
Because those are not the browsers Firefox and others keep borrowing innovative features from. Those haven't been around for ten years. Those aren't pushing open standards, both by implementing them, and by paying people to work at the W3C and such.
You really need to relearn your browser history. Perhaps you are a bit too young to have followed Opera through the years? It has defined what a modern browser is supposed to be doing, both on the PC and on mobiles.
"Opera is and probably always will have a trivial userbase.."
You aren't quite paying attention. It's huge on mobiles, and now that it's available for free without ads on the PC lots of people are downloading it.
"I think Opera messed itself up by selling their web browser at first."
I disagree.
Opera has done well by selling browsers. It's a company, after all, so they have to make money and can't rely on donations from others.
Today the company is growing at an incredible pace, and rather than losing that momentum on the desktop because they could have been huge and losing users, they are now tiny instead, and are gaining users. Firefox was there at the right time and people started switching. All Opera has to do now is to offer a free alternative, which it does, and market it properly.
Opera has been around for ten years and has always experienced growth. I would hardly call that "messed itself up".
No, CyricZ, that would not be logical. You are a clueless newbie, and you don't even understand what I am referring to. Manipulate IBM? Are you some kind of moron?
I've got karma to spare, so it doesn't matter if this is modded redundant or whatever...
The parent makes a point which seems to be ignored by a lot of people comparing Google to Microsoft.
Microsoft were evil from the very beginning!
The bought a hack of an OS off a guy and sold it to IBM. They lied to and manipulated people. They basically did everything they could to get ahead.
Unlike Google, which actually tries to be "nice". It's got massive geek cred, and it seems to have done nicely without the kind of anti-competitive tactics that were part of Microsoft's business strategy from the very beginning.
I don't know if you've used the same Konqueror that I have - the one that comes with KDE - but it's got a really ugly, clunky, slow, bloated user interface. It also doesn't "do one task". Konqueror is tightly integrated with KDE and does all kinds of stuff, which shows, since it's incredibly slow.
As for Opera not being "the light, snappy browser it once was" (how do you "feel" that something is heavy?), Opera has never been just a browser. It's done mail and newsgroups since at least version 2. And at version 9 it's still smaller and faster[1] than anything comparable (that is, other modern browsers), and with a better UI. Yes, Konqueror's bloated UI blows chunks. And it eats memory like there's no tomorrow, unlike Opera, which is very memory efficient.
So basically, you don't know what you are talking about. As usual.
And stop talking about your penis, spammer.
[1] Notice how the latest Konqueror is incredibly slow? Yep, it's getting even more bloated!
If they are wondering what Firefox will be implementing, they might as well look here;-)
Sony auto-installing malware from SunnComm...
on
Bad Day To Be Sony
·
· Score: 1
I couldn't find it mentioned in the comments, so here goes: There is an interesting analysis of a piece of spyware/malware from a scamming company called SunnComm, which describes how it installs itself automatically and silently if you just insert the CD on a Windows system. An EULA is presented, but the software is installed whether you accept it or not, and it reports back to SunnComm.
What's also interesting is SunnComm's history of making bogus announcements about non-existing products to pump up the stock price, and the SunnComm shills trying to discredit the guy who found out about their malware.
"Not to mention, if you have truecrypt sitting on your hard disk, what's the point of pretending you don't use it?"
I have lots of programs on my hard disk that I don't use. I just installed them to test them, and never bothered removing them again.
Other than that, the answer to your question seems obvious: Use TC to encrypt trivial data. Maybe your own personal documents/pictures/holiday movies. Create a container somewhere obvious to take their attention away from other possibilities. You can create an encrypted disk on an unformatted hard disk, and there's no way to prove that there's anything there. If they ask why it's in your PC it's because you haven't had the time to set it up yet or something.
"Although given the fact that they were waving and smiling at the photographer, it doesn't seem likely that they were actually prepared to use violence."
They fired rounds at the ship, even with their RPG. There were undetonated rockets on the deck after the attack.
Am I the only one who thinks that searches through the Google toolbar won't lead to any referral money for Mozilla? By doing this Google is basically getting people to use Google to search through their browser (Firefox), and they won't have to pay Mozilla a dime.
Then again, this could lead to more Firefox users in the long run, so it's not like Mozilla gets a bad deal.
Your comment seems to be rather illogical and self-contradictory.
"Apple needs Microsoft to justify their existence, but Microsoft doesn't."
"On the other hand, if MS disappears (highly unlikely), who will Apple fans point to as the average, price conscious user"
Why does Apple need Microsoft to justify their existence? If Microsoft didn't exist, then Apple would either be huge, and doing just fine, or they would be competing with someone else, and still doing just fine. Apple doesn't need Microsoft to create decent products. That competition leeds to better products doesn't mean that Microsoft has to be that competition.
"And that's why I can't "buy" into Apple and the Mac platform. I just want to get work done--not show off. I'm not saying OS X is a bad product--far from it. It just seems like owning a Apple product turns people into RDFed Steve fans. That's not what I want to be, sorry."
This doesn't make sense at all. You are basically saying that you don't want to use Mac, not because of what the Mac is like, but because of the people using it?
If the problem with Mac, in your opinion, is that Apple fanboys are annoying, then say so. I fail to see what Apple fanboys have to do with what you can get done with a Mac. The way you are doing this now is just being dishonest about the real reason for not using a Mac.
No, really. What do rabid Apple fanboys have to do with the actual products?
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As a program, Firefox is built on mature technology, and it's had things go smoothly because older browsers have tried and failed various approaches, and therefore Firefox could easily learn from these mistakes and avoid them.
You have got to be kidding me!If you look at the changelog for Firefox 1.5, guess which browser had most of those features first? Opera.
Also, Opera was one of the first (if not the first) browser with MDI. Popup blocking was also built into Opera before anything else. And the search field to the right of the address field in Firefox and IE7? Yet another Opera invetion from ages ago. Not to mention things like sessions, that let you continue where you left off, and so on. Bookmark nicknames? Opera. Easy deleting of private data? Opera.
Heck, even the built in e-mail client in Opera was lightyears ahead of others, like Gmail, which borrowed Opera's concept of virtual folders/labels.
I'm not even going to go into Opera for mobile phones...
You obviously don't know much about Opera, or you wouldn't have made a remark like that.
So what exactly has Firefox brought to the table in terms of innovation? Silly me, I thought Firefox was supposed to be a lean and mean browser, not a feature beast!So how exactly does Firefox win "hands down"?
Also, I've already answered the "amount of time" comment. Obviously Firefox has a huge advantage, in that it could start off clean, and look at older browsers to cherry-pick features and functionality. It doesn't have to make all the mistakes older browsers have made. Then again, it has made serious mistakes, some of which are being fixed or have been (extensions support).
So you think Firefox created itself for free? That no one has paid any money for it?Let me give you another history lesson. Mozilla was funded by AOL, and then AOL gave it a few millions in cash and sent it on its way. In other words, AOL's customers paid for it. Now others started donating to Mozilla - Google, Sun, Nokia, and so on. Now their customers had to pay the bill for Mozilla's development.
Now Mozilla has created its own corporation - the Mozilla Corporation - because they want to be able to make more money.
If you think Firefox or Mozilla has not had to consider the financial aspects of software development, you are dead wrong.
Sorry, but as I said, you lose again! Incredible how easy it is to flop you around like a rag doll.
Now go away.
Sorry, you lose again.
You really don't have any proper arguments ever, do you?
Your reply didn't have anything to do with what I actually wrote. Instead, you throw out straw men like there's no tomorrow. Basically, that's how all your replies go: You misrepresent what the person said and attack that, and then declare victory when people rightly declare you to be the moron that you are.
Anyway, your social antenna seems to be completely broken. You are having problems relating to people even online, and you spend all your time spamming Slashdot with useless posts. I feel sorry for you.
What Netscape did years ago is basically irrelevant in this discussion, because the other person brought up a couple of obscure browsers that haven't really done anything like Opera has. Most of the things we take for granted in modern browsers (popup blocking, the standard browser search field, privacy controls, sessions, bookmark nicknames, etc.) were invented by Opera.
It's fun to notice how many years ago was the last time anything that had anything to do with Netscape was innovative. Mozilla has certainly always been a follower and always trying to catch up with Opera, as is apparent from its blatant ripoff of Opera's features.
Sadly they are unable to do it properly, so it ends up as a rather bloated software package. 5 MB for a plain browser without anything else?!
Again, they are irrelevant because they are old, and they never "innovated" anything beyond creating some of the first browsers and some common features. Just like Firefox doesn't innovate, but just keeps copying Opera. Just look at the new features in Firefox 1.5. Guess where most of those were borrowed from? That's right, Opera has had most of those for years! Actually, Opera had a newsreader and e-mail client back when the first version was released in the mid-nineties.Also, integration was a known concept ages before Netscape did it.
I would have to disagree with you there. The e-mail client in Opera is what Google based their Gmail (officially the best webmail service in existence) functionality on, and even back when Opera had a normal folder based e-mail client, it was better than Netscape's. I used to be a Netscape user, and the e-mail client sucks badly. It can't even compare to Opera.Haven't we been through this before? Quite a while ago Microsoft bragged about using XML as its new Office format. It turned out to be XML with some proprietary additions and such. Is this the very same format, only now Microsoft is claiming it to be open again?
To clarify: the announcement on the stock exchange was not meant to generate PR or get the attention of the media. It was meant to inform current and potential investors of its future plans, and how it intends to make money. This is necessary knowledge for people to decide whether or not they want to invest in the company. And again, lying on the stock exchange and misleading people there will get you in big trouble.
Norway smacks down hard on companies that try to play the market, and Opera Software is also known to be honest and modest. The original owners could have sold out years ago and would have been filthy rich, but they are still running the company themselves.
Opera has made plenty enough profit to survive and experience constant growth for many years.
Now, yes, because they just eleased the desktop version for free without ads. I've already told you about that. Please pay attention. You get lots of users searching through Google (a huge part of the desktop revenues in the past), even more now that Opera is free without ads, and combined with a better search deal with Google, you have the potential of a lot of money flowing in. You are wrong, as I have already told you. They expect to make a lot more money on the desktop side now. They get better PR and they make more money.You are wrong, actually. About a third of their revenues came from desktop browsers until recently. Now that they've made it free without ads they expect to make even more money on the desktop.
Also, didn't you say that you hadn't tried Opera lately anyway? So how can you make this comparison?
You really need to relearn your browser history. Perhaps you are a bit too young to have followed Opera through the years? It has defined what a modern browser is supposed to be doing, both on the PC and on mobiles.
You aren't quite paying attention. It's huge on mobiles, and now that it's available for free without ads on the PC lots of people are downloading it.Opera has done well by selling browsers. It's a company, after all, so they have to make money and can't rely on donations from others.
Today the company is growing at an incredible pace, and rather than losing that momentum on the desktop because they could have been huge and losing users, they are now tiny instead, and are gaining users. Firefox was there at the right time and people started switching. All Opera has to do now is to offer a free alternative, which it does, and market it properly.
Opera has been around for ten years and has always experienced growth. I would hardly call that "messed itself up".
That's like saying "I don't like Firefox because I don't like it".
No, CyricZ, that would not be logical. You are a clueless newbie, and you don't even understand what I am referring to. Manipulate IBM? Are you some kind of moron?
The parent makes a point which seems to be ignored by a lot of people comparing Google to Microsoft.
Microsoft were evil from the very beginning!
The bought a hack of an OS off a guy and sold it to IBM. They lied to and manipulated people. They basically did everything they could to get ahead.
Unlike Google, which actually tries to be "nice". It's got massive geek cred, and it seems to have done nicely without the kind of anti-competitive tactics that were part of Microsoft's business strategy from the very beginning.
As for Opera not being "the light, snappy browser it once was" (how do you "feel" that something is heavy?), Opera has never been just a browser. It's done mail and newsgroups since at least version 2. And at version 9 it's still smaller and faster[1] than anything comparable (that is, other modern browsers), and with a better UI. Yes, Konqueror's bloated UI blows chunks. And it eats memory like there's no tomorrow, unlike Opera, which is very memory efficient.
So basically, you don't know what you are talking about. As usual.
And stop talking about your penis, spammer.
[1] Notice how the latest Konqueror is incredibly slow? Yep, it's getting even more bloated!
If they are wondering what Firefox will be implementing, they might as well look here ;-)
What's also interesting is SunnComm's history of making bogus announcements about non-existing products to pump up the stock price, and the SunnComm shills trying to discredit the guy who found out about their malware.
Definitely worth a look.
Other than that, the answer to your question seems obvious: Use TC to encrypt trivial data. Maybe your own personal documents/pictures/holiday movies. Create a container somewhere obvious to take their attention away from other possibilities. You can create an encrypted disk on an unformatted hard disk, and there's no way to prove that there's anything there. If they ask why it's in your PC it's because you haven't had the time to set it up yet or something.
Then again, this could lead to more Firefox users in the long run, so it's not like Mozilla gets a bad deal.
If the problem with Mac, in your opinion, is that Apple fanboys are annoying, then say so. I fail to see what Apple fanboys have to do with what you can get done with a Mac. The way you are doing this now is just being dishonest about the real reason for not using a Mac.
No, really. What do rabid Apple fanboys have to do with the actual products?