"Take a look at the difference from Opera 6 to 7. It's a HUGE facelife."
Isn't Mozilla now doing something similar by separating the browser from the e-mail client and so on? They are obviously making big changes, although maybe not on the same level as Opera 7 vs. 6.
Regarding "slower development", did you know that Opera 7 was apparently a complete rewrite, and done in a year and a half? How long did it take for Mozilla to get to a stage where they had a usable browser? When was the project started again, and when was 1.0 out?
Slashdot ignored 7.0 final of Opera didn't it? Anyway, I remember that it has ignored a couple of important releases of Opera, it doesn't really matter which. The fact is still that it gets far less coverage than Mozilla, which is a shame. More press for good alternatives is a good thing.
Opera 7 has a cross-platform GUI toolkit. Its own.
Opera's slower development?! Oh please. No one coughs up new and innovative features like Opera.
Mozilla is a damn fine browser, but Opera is not progressing slowly. If you think so, you are obviously not following the development of the browser.
Excuse me, but what novice user will be playing around with chown? And since there's only one user and he is root anyway, what possible damage can he do with chown?
In fact, Lindows seems to be aimed at people who want point and click rather than a command line interface.
How is this worse than Windows 98 or XP Home, where there is only one user, and that user is "all-powerful"?
I don't get it. Why this attitude towards doing something which is uncommon in the Linux world? He isn't aiming his product at "1337 h4xx0rz", but at people who want point and click simplicity! Elitist bastards need not apply.
I would argue that Opera, a commercial product, has innovated and brought a lot more useful features to the browser world.
"Type ahead find" was first introduced to the browser world by Opera in Opera 6.0, and is called "inline find".
Then you have MDI (not tabbed browsing, but windows inside the main program window), which is what Opera started out as, which is a more primitive version of tabbed browsing. Today, Opera has refined tabbed browsing to be infinitely more flexible for my own usage. Almost perfection, again for my personal use. Some may prefer the way Mozilla does it.
Mouse gestures was brought to the browser platform by Opera.
Other usability/accessibility feature like keyboard shortcuts for just about every single action, and spatial navigation (navigate a webpage using the arrow keys), etc.
Small screen rendering, which gives you regular webpages on tiny screens, and which many Mozilla fanatics completely trashed as "just a simple style sheet". Well, if it's that simple, why didn't anyone think about it until Opera came along? Just an example of Opera's innovation, which doesn't even have to be something complicated!
Mozilla borrows heavily from Opera. Not that this is a bad thing, and not that Mozilla doesn't have its own share of innovative features. But if you look at the big picture, Opera's contributions to the world of browsers cannot be overestimated.
One of the reasons might be that Opera is the underdog in the commercial browser world. They are struggling to make money in this market, so they have to be innovative. They have to be in the forefront, and they have to listen to their customers.
In conclusion, Mozilla has a lot of features which its followers believe to be Mozilla innovations, when they are in fact borrowed from other browsers - very often Opera.
And before you mention it, yes, Opera borrows features from other browsers, or from other programs and adds them to the browser world, but it is truly innovative, and other browsers are always playing catch-up in a way.
I have always wondered by so few spammers are paying for their actions. I mean, they are annoying millions of people. One would have thought that with many spammers' locations freely available, with the rage felt by some people over spam, and the psychos we know exist out there, more spammers would have been found decapitated, drowned, tortured to death etc.
Seriously, why aren't the spammers getting more trouble over the crap they are doing to people's inboxes? They are messing with big dollars here. People are losing valuable time and money...
Well, it's a good way to get people's attention...
That said, it seems that a lot of "vulnerabilities" are simply blown out of proportions. These security companies seem to be falling over themselves trying to get people's attention, whether it is warranted or not.
Sadly, crashes in browsers are common. For MSIE. For Mozilla. For Opera. For Konqueror. Does this one really warrant a story on/.? I can swear I've seen similar silly crashes in all other "popular" browsers.
While I don't have a problem with a review being a personal opinion, and never an objective look at how it will work for everyone, I must agree that statements like "most of the users don't use ISDN for example" are completely useless. How does the reviewer know this? And what possible reason could she have for including it? To justify nonsensical comments which she is unable to defend in other ways?
That said, this review wasn't too bad. I must admit that I wasn't really aware of the huge number of people who seem to hate her out there until just recently. But it's a review. A personal opinion. She just has her own style, and it seems to strike the wrong cord with some people.
"Microsoft could kill Linux tomorrow simply by dropping their prices."
This is a strange claim. Care to explain why you think this is possible? What do you mean by "kill"?
You can't kill Linux by underpricing it. Even if Microsoft did drop prices and most people switched over, there would still be a rather large group of hardcore Linux users that would never switch, because they are already perfectly happy. These people would continue to develop Linux, even though they aren't getting paid, and the result is one of two:
Microsoft lowers Linux market share and turns prices back up. People start switching back to Linux again, and Microsoft have lost a lot of money for nothing.
Microsoft keeps prices low but loses a lot of money because of this, which is a bad thing for them
Microsoft is in a situation where they cannot win. They are up against people who use Linux and who would never switch, and some/most of them will continue work on Linux even if it dropped in popularity.
Then there's the people who would never use Microsoft products for political reasons.
The Stylus is tiny and has is made of metal. It is also protected against water (though you can't go scuba diving with it). The Stylus 300 is quite cheap and takes good quality pictures. It is a tiny camera which fits anywhere.
Check out Steves Digicams or any other digital camera site for info.
Choosing software based on irrelevant information rather than going by the quality of the software? That's about the same as not considering alternatives to what you are currently using. It's the same mindless nonsense we should be getting away from in the first place. It's the kind of mentality which leads to better open-source alternatives not being chosen in the first place.
Software should be chosen based on your needs and the quality of the software. If closed-source software is the best choice for your needs, use it.
As people are pointing out, put briefly: You are wrong. The E3 demo apparently ran on a Radeon 9700 - it will run perfectly on such a card. It will probably be able to run decently on a Radeon 8500 as well, and even GeForce 3.
The game isn't out because no one can run it, but because it isn't finished yet. The hardware to run the game has actually been around for a long time now.
What is really worrying is that convicted criminals are in Bush's administration. After being convicted of lying to Congress about Nicaragua/Contras, they are back in power. Poindexter, Negroponte, Abrams, Reich, Elliott... Why are convicted criminals who lied to their own country - betrayed their country - back in powerful positions?
Copying is not stealing. Stealing is taking something from someone else. Copying something does not remove the original, and is not stealing. Violating copyright laws is illegal, but it is not stealing.
Actually, the postal office is using your "bandwidth". AOL pays them to do this. You can't even compare it to spam. You calling them hypocrites still shows a lack of understanding about the real issues at hand.
Except they paid to send you stuff through snail mail. Spammers basically use other people's bandwidth and disk space to send out their crap. Hypocrites? Not at all.
"Hardly anyone robs banks, some people shoplift, and virtually everyone speeds."
Whoa! Hold on there! In no way have you proven that higher penalties lead to fewer crimes! In fact, hasn't research shown that this is not the case at all?
Why do you think the penalties are less severe for shoplifting and speeding? Because they are not as serious as robbing a bank! You say that "virtually everyone speeds", yet the number of traffic accidents is very low compared to this. Right? So, speeding does not seem like a big thing to most people. The result is that the penalties are low. Shoplifting. You are stealing something, often in smaller amounts, and no one gets hurt. So the penalties are smaller.
But a bank robbery! You steal huge amounts of money, and you leave emotional scars in your victims. The people behind the counter are human beings, you know. So the penalty is higher.
This seems very logical and simple to me. But you actually want copyright infringements by individuals to be considered to be on the same level as serious crimes where people actually get hurt in some way or where huge sums are lost?
So if I download some illegal songs to my PC, I should be fined as if I had done something really serious?
Wow...
"We can address the problem of widespread casual piracy by making the penalty for doing so severe, and the likelihood of getting caught high."
I cannot see that you have actually proven that this is the case with your post. You have, however, turned everything upside-down, and in a way you are actually claiming that the penalty for the crime was decided on before people started committing the crime!
Surely, you understand that the laws were made according to how serious the crime is?
Look, if high penalties would keep people from breaking the law, why don't we treat all crimes equally and give everyone the same punishment no matter how serious or insignificant the crime is?
Either you are completely out of touch with reality here, or I am missing something. You cannot compare Microsoft to a company which cuts costs in bad times!
Microsoft are making money even today, because of their business practices. This means that they can afford this. On apparently couldn't afford it, and they even had to cut costs by laying off other employees as well.
You said it yourself: "The semiconductor industry collapsed". If it collapsed, they obviously cannot afford to continue as before. They probably had to do radical changes to cut costs right now or go out of business.
I can understand that you are bitter for not getting the internship, but comparing them to Microsoft, a company in a completely different situation, is both unfair and shows lack of judgement.
Unless I am missing something, which I am sure you will explain if this is the case.
This is a fair point in a way, but all you are really doing is questioning my Apache vs. IIS argument and making the answer a bit more difficult. I still cannot see that the claim that "Windows has more users so more security holes are discovered" really has any merit.
But still, Apache does have a majority of the market, and web servers are commonly set up by people that are a bit more knowledgeable than Joe Blow. I personally have owned both Windows 2000 and now XP, but I have never used IIS. Why should I? How many "Joe Blows" will actually run IIS anyway? I don't think I know anyone who does!
So does that make me a freak, or could it be that your "millions of home users" claim for IIS could equaly well be made for Apache, which is actually set up by default with most Linux distributions (although often only accepting local connections by default)?
So in the end, we have these facts that can be confirmed, more or less:
Apache has the biggest market share
Apache has far fewer known security holes than IIS
Web servers are usually not run by "normal" or novice users
So while your arguments may have some merits, I still don't think they explain the huge difference between Apache and IIS, and it does not seem to support the claim that "the most widely used products will automatically have more security holes".
I don't think this is an excuse Microsoft can hide behind for its products!
It is difficult to prove this one way or the other. First, the source code for Linux is available, and as such more people can study it, and they probably do. Windows might be more widespread, but how many Windows users are actually knowledgeable enough to even find a security hole?
It doesn't matter how many users it has because they users won't be looking for security holes in the first place. So if you put 10 Windows users in a room, none of them would know much about these things. Putting 10 Linux users in a room, and you increase the chance that you'll find a real hacker. I'm a Windows user myself, so I'm not trying to sound like an elitist bastard. I haven't even uncovered any security holes in my life.
But it is difficult to determine this case, as there are a lot of questions and too few answers.
Let us instead look at a piece of software where the numbers are reversed - where Microsoft's product has only a small part of the market.
I am talking about the open-source Apache HTTP server, vs. Microsoft's IIS.
Apache has 60-70 per cent of the web server market. IIS has less than 30 at the moment. Yet, despite these figures, Apache has had far fewer known security issues than ISS. How does this fit with your question? Obviously, there are a lot more eyes on Apache due to its large market share?
So how does IIS come out so crappy when it comes to security?
I think we can come to the conclusion that your "it's not as frequently used so very few are looking for security holes"-like statement simply does not make sense. It is a myth. FUD?
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding "slower development", did you know that Opera 7 was apparently a complete rewrite, and done in a year and a half? How long did it take for Mozilla to get to a stage where they had a usable browser? When was the project started again, and when was 1.0 out?
Yeah, the download is about four times bigger than Opera... ;)
Opera 7 has a cross-platform GUI toolkit. Its own.
Opera's slower development?! Oh please. No one coughs up new and innovative features like Opera.
Mozilla is a damn fine browser, but Opera is not progressing slowly. If you think so, you are obviously not following the development of the browser.
In fact, Lindows seems to be aimed at people who want point and click rather than a command line interface.
How is this worse than Windows 98 or XP Home, where there is only one user, and that user is "all-powerful"?
I don't get it. Why this attitude towards doing something which is uncommon in the Linux world? He isn't aiming his product at "1337 h4xx0rz", but at people who want point and click simplicity! Elitist bastards need not apply.
"Type ahead find" was first introduced to the browser world by Opera in Opera 6.0, and is called "inline find".
Then you have MDI (not tabbed browsing, but windows inside the main program window), which is what Opera started out as, which is a more primitive version of tabbed browsing. Today, Opera has refined tabbed browsing to be infinitely more flexible for my own usage. Almost perfection, again for my personal use. Some may prefer the way Mozilla does it.
Mouse gestures was brought to the browser platform by Opera.
Other usability/accessibility feature like keyboard shortcuts for just about every single action, and spatial navigation (navigate a webpage using the arrow keys), etc.
Small screen rendering, which gives you regular webpages on tiny screens, and which many Mozilla fanatics completely trashed as "just a simple style sheet". Well, if it's that simple, why didn't anyone think about it until Opera came along? Just an example of Opera's innovation, which doesn't even have to be something complicated!
Mozilla borrows heavily from Opera. Not that this is a bad thing, and not that Mozilla doesn't have its own share of innovative features. But if you look at the big picture, Opera's contributions to the world of browsers cannot be overestimated.
One of the reasons might be that Opera is the underdog in the commercial browser world. They are struggling to make money in this market, so they have to be innovative. They have to be in the forefront, and they have to listen to their customers.
In conclusion, Mozilla has a lot of features which its followers believe to be Mozilla innovations, when they are in fact borrowed from other browsers - very often Opera.
And before you mention it, yes, Opera borrows features from other browsers, or from other programs and adds them to the browser world, but it is truly innovative, and other browsers are always playing catch-up in a way.
Seriously, why aren't the spammers getting more trouble over the crap they are doing to people's inboxes? They are messing with big dollars here. People are losing valuable time and money...
Why is nothing happening?
That said, it seems that a lot of "vulnerabilities" are simply blown out of proportions. These security companies seem to be falling over themselves trying to get people's attention, whether it is warranted or not.
Sadly, crashes in browsers are common. For MSIE. For Mozilla. For Opera. For Konqueror. Does this one really warrant a story on /.? I can swear I've seen similar silly crashes in all other "popular" browsers.
That said, this review wasn't too bad. I must admit that I wasn't really aware of the huge number of people who seem to hate her out there until just recently. But it's a review. A personal opinion. She just has her own style, and it seems to strike the wrong cord with some people.
This is a strange claim. Care to explain why you think this is possible? What do you mean by "kill"?
You can't kill Linux by underpricing it. Even if Microsoft did drop prices and most people switched over, there would still be a rather large group of hardcore Linux users that would never switch, because they are already perfectly happy. These people would continue to develop Linux, even though they aren't getting paid, and the result is one of two:
- Microsoft lowers Linux market share and turns prices back up. People start switching back to Linux again, and Microsoft have lost a lot of money for nothing.
- Microsoft keeps prices low but loses a lot of money because of this, which is a bad thing for them
Microsoft is in a situation where they cannot win. They are up against people who use Linux and who would never switch, and some/most of them will continue work on Linux even if it dropped in popularity.Then there's the people who would never use Microsoft products for political reasons.
Your claim just doesn't make sense.
Check out Steves Digicams or any other digital camera site for info.
Software should be chosen based on your needs and the quality of the software. If closed-source software is the best choice for your needs, use it.
The game isn't out because no one can run it, but because it isn't finished yet. The hardware to run the game has actually been around for a long time now.
Is't Carmack and everyone else in id filthy rich? Why would they need even more money? Carmack has more luxury cars than he has shoes!
No, even more powerful. It doesn't "snap back". It rewinds. Hence the name.
http://rss.com.com/2100-1023-980492.html
Still LOL.
Oh yeah? LOL.
What is really worrying is that convicted criminals are in Bush's administration. After being convicted of lying to Congress about Nicaragua/Contras, they are back in power. Poindexter, Negroponte, Abrams, Reich, Elliott... Why are convicted criminals who lied to their own country - betrayed their country - back in powerful positions?
Copying is not stealing. Stealing is taking something from someone else. Copying something does not remove the original, and is not stealing. Violating copyright laws is illegal, but it is not stealing.
Actually, the postal office is using your "bandwidth". AOL pays them to do this. You can't even compare it to spam. You calling them hypocrites still shows a lack of understanding about the real issues at hand.
Except they paid to send you stuff through snail mail. Spammers basically use other people's bandwidth and disk space to send out their crap. Hypocrites? Not at all.
Why do you think the penalties are less severe for shoplifting and speeding? Because they are not as serious as robbing a bank! You say that "virtually everyone speeds", yet the number of traffic accidents is very low compared to this. Right? So, speeding does not seem like a big thing to most people. The result is that the penalties are low. Shoplifting. You are stealing something, often in smaller amounts, and no one gets hurt. So the penalties are smaller.
But a bank robbery! You steal huge amounts of money, and you leave emotional scars in your victims. The people behind the counter are human beings, you know. So the penalty is higher.
This seems very logical and simple to me. But you actually want copyright infringements by individuals to be considered to be on the same level as serious crimes where people actually get hurt in some way or where huge sums are lost?
So if I download some illegal songs to my PC, I should be fined as if I had done something really serious?
Wow...
I cannot see that you have actually proven that this is the case with your post. You have, however, turned everything upside-down, and in a way you are actually claiming that the penalty for the crime was decided on before people started committing the crime!Surely, you understand that the laws were made according to how serious the crime is?
Look, if high penalties would keep people from breaking the law, why don't we treat all crimes equally and give everyone the same punishment no matter how serious or insignificant the crime is?
Do you see what I'm saying?
Microsoft are making money even today, because of their business practices. This means that they can afford this. On apparently couldn't afford it, and they even had to cut costs by laying off other employees as well.
You said it yourself: "The semiconductor industry collapsed". If it collapsed, they obviously cannot afford to continue as before. They probably had to do radical changes to cut costs right now or go out of business.
I can understand that you are bitter for not getting the internship, but comparing them to Microsoft, a company in a completely different situation, is both unfair and shows lack of judgement.
Unless I am missing something, which I am sure you will explain if this is the case.
But still, Apache does have a majority of the market, and web servers are commonly set up by people that are a bit more knowledgeable than Joe Blow. I personally have owned both Windows 2000 and now XP, but I have never used IIS. Why should I? How many "Joe Blows" will actually run IIS anyway? I don't think I know anyone who does!
So does that make me a freak, or could it be that your "millions of home users" claim for IIS could equaly well be made for Apache, which is actually set up by default with most Linux distributions (although often only accepting local connections by default)?
So in the end, we have these facts that can be confirmed, more or less:
- Apache has the biggest market share
- Apache has far fewer known security holes than IIS
- Web servers are usually not run by "normal" or novice users
So while your arguments may have some merits, I still don't think they explain the huge difference between Apache and IIS, and it does not seem to support the claim that "the most widely used products will automatically have more security holes".I don't think this is an excuse Microsoft can hide behind for its products!
It doesn't matter how many users it has because they users won't be looking for security holes in the first place. So if you put 10 Windows users in a room, none of them would know much about these things. Putting 10 Linux users in a room, and you increase the chance that you'll find a real hacker. I'm a Windows user myself, so I'm not trying to sound like an elitist bastard. I haven't even uncovered any security holes in my life.
But it is difficult to determine this case, as there are a lot of questions and too few answers.
Let us instead look at a piece of software where the numbers are reversed - where Microsoft's product has only a small part of the market.
I am talking about the open-source Apache HTTP server, vs. Microsoft's IIS.
Apache has 60-70 per cent of the web server market. IIS has less than 30 at the moment. Yet, despite these figures, Apache has had far fewer known security issues than ISS. How does this fit with your question? Obviously, there are a lot more eyes on Apache due to its large market share?
So how does IIS come out so crappy when it comes to security?
I think we can come to the conclusion that your "it's not as frequently used so very few are looking for security holes"-like statement simply does not make sense. It is a myth. FUD?