I think that the question is whether the Mozilla foundation owns the rights to the name "Netscape", which I couldn't find an easy answer to. The Mozilla Foundation's first press release does contain this tidbit, however (emphasis added):
To help launch the new organization, America Online has pledged $2 million in cash to the Mozilla Foundation over the next two years. AOL will also contribute additional resources through equipment, domain names and trademarks, and related intellectual property, as well as providing some transitional assistance for key personnel as they move into the new organization.
That suggests they own some trademarks, but it may be limited to Mozilla and not extend to Netscape. I'm curious about the details of the deal as well.
It's not even *that* hard to turn off Messenger. There's an option that includes two checkboxes, something like "Run messenger when windows starts" and "allow messenger to run in the background". Uncheck those, close messenger, and never see it again. On new XP installs for me it's a tossup between doing that and turning off the horrible new theme and start menu as the very first thing after booting.
Why is this modded informative, and not flamebait? I find the alternatives to be superior in every possible way except perhaps startup time, and even there it's not significant on anything above Pentium II-level hardware. I know people are also huge fans of Opera, but as Mozilla Firebird is my area of expertise (I do a lot of volunteer QA work in BugZilla), let's review a few things it has over IE:
Tabbed browsing, prevents the taskbar from getting cluttered and allows groups of webpages to be saved as one bookmark.
Popup blocking. Can be gotten by installing the Google bar now I realize, but it's built into Firebird and very customizable (you can "whitelist" sites so that good popups get through).
The built-in search bar. Lets you quickly search google, or any of over 100 other choices you can add quickly and easily.
Standards support. I guess this is a personal preference, but I tend to support non-monopolistic behavior.
New versions come out every day. If a feature or bug fix is checked in, due to Firebird's open source nature. By the same token, you can request (and reasonably expect a response) fixes and features.
Extensions and skins. If there's a feature that hasn't or won't be added to Firebird, chances are there is a well-supported extension you can install with one click to provide it. Similarly, if you don't like how Firebird looks you can choose from dozens of great skins ("themes").
Every feature IE has, with the exception of rendering badly broken sites (I realize this is a deal breaker for many, unfortunately).
None of the security holes and worm-enabling code of IE.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Saying that "the alternatives suck" is really just a sign to me that you haven't given them a chance, as they already offer all IE has and more, and they're just getting started.
Why do you assume they're just going to be sitting around? From the article:
"It's serious because it forces us to delay the launch of the game by at least four months, that is to April 2004. Just the time to rewrite parts of the game."
They're probably scrambling to change how various multiplayer features work so their game isn't absolutely unplayable due to hacks and cheats on release.
Re:NDAs are a necessary evil to some environments
on
The Cult of the NDA
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· Score: 3, Funny
Damn, I was hoping you were talking about Tommy Maddox, one and only MVP of Vince McMahon's eXtreme Football League and quarterback for the Los Angeles eXtreme! Let's see how much trouble I get in for trying to Slashdot my school...
Your post was great. As an independent/punk fan myself, I've definitely seen bands support themselves largely off cheap merch, and I think that sounds like a good model for linux distros to try, at least as a supplement to their normal business.
Damn, I wish I hadn't spent all my mod points bumping goatse.cx posts +1, Informative...uh, I mean...
Also (and I find this a tad stupid), you aparrantly have to specifically mark good emails as NOT JUNK. Just leaving them alone isn't good enough, actually select them all, right-click and choose Mark > As Not Junk. This should help reduce false positives on spam. As for mail going to the outbox folder, I've never heard of that. Would you consider filing a bug in Bugzilla for it to help out the developers? (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org, it doesn't allow direct links from Slashdot).
This info is specific to Visual C++ 2002/2003, but it might be relevant to GCC too, I really don't know. Look at the "best practices" portion at the bottom in particular.
I normally use Firebird, but I downloaded a Mozilla build yesterday to check on a bug and it looks like resizing is off by default (and I agree it's a fairly stupid feature, but I guess since IE has it enough people clamored for it and it's an option now).
There is another bug posted in this thread, but I think the best match is actually bug 16409 (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16409 ), "Invoke spell check in browser (multiple form fields)". I encourage those interested in seeing this feature to get a Bugzilla account and vote for it, or if you're programming-inclined, dive in and write some code;).
I'd like that big projects like Moz or KDE be modular in terms of speed vs. functionalities : if I have a powerful machine, I'll want the super 3D web-o-matic, and if I run it on an old machine, I have an option to do without and I can stay at a level of niceties and support corresponding to the speed of the machine.
I believe that's why Mozilla Firebird (a leaner, browser-only version of Mozilla and the future of the project) supports the concept of extensions, of which there are now over 100. These are all non-critical features that have been stripped out and made available to those who need them. And Firebird is still months away from a final release; performance, UI and bloat-reduction are top priorities and will only get better as it nears 1.0. I don't think Mozilla is the tool you're looking for; give Firebird (or another stripped down Mozilla version) a chance.
As per the roadmap, the plan is to eventually to get a common runtime environment that all Mozilla-based apps can run within (Firebird, Thunderbird, Chatzilla, the Sunbird calendar, etc). This will eliminate the problem of all these programs sharing significant amounts of code and wasting memory/disk space. It'll take a while though, and to be fair neither of these programs is claiming to be at release quality anyway (Firebird is working toward version 0.7, and Thunderbird is closing in on 0.2). Give them a chance, I'm confident that once these changes get made we'll see a huge reduction in bloat.
I think he meant those who are writing Qt apps include volunteer developers, and if their Qt app stops working suddenly with the new version they have less time and incentive to upgrade to it.
You might want to at least upgrade to the new Netscape 7.1, it's based on Mozilla 1.4 which is the new "stable" branch they recommend all Mozilla-based products use (the previous one was 1.0, so any older Netscapes are significantly behind in fixes and new features). I use 1.4 and love it, give it a shot.
When I first started learning to program QBASIC, I too had the Dummies book and found it nearly worthless. I actually ended up accidentally leaving it on a plane and didn't even care:). Afterward a friend recommended the "Absolute Beginner's Guide to QBASIC" which is now out of print and hard to find, but if you locate it it's an awesome tool for learning the language.
Um, like he said, the video is UNCOMPRESSED and still fits on one. The original poster said you would only be able to fit a movie on one disc if you compressed it. Obviously one of the two is wrong.
Re:Obsession? How about just plain old usability?
on
Legacy-Free PCs
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· Score: 1
Was that the first generation of the IntelliMouse explorer or whatever you call it? I had one of those that just stopped working one day. To MS's credit, they eventually shipped me a replacement...which also broke. I got fed up and just went back to my old non-optical mouse. But that's interesting to hear it was a widespread defect with the product, guess I should have waited a little longer before adopting something as unnatural as a mouse with no ball;)
Slashdot Mirror
It's not even *that* hard to turn off Messenger. There's an option that includes two checkboxes, something like "Run messenger when windows starts" and "allow messenger to run in the background". Uncheck those, close messenger, and never see it again. On new XP installs for me it's a tossup between doing that and turning off the horrible new theme and start menu as the very first thing after booting.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Saying that "the alternatives suck" is really just a sign to me that you haven't given them a chance, as they already offer all IE has and more, and they're just getting started.
"Geek Eye for the PHB Guy" has to be one of the better things I've read recently, thanks for that :).
Damn, I was hoping you were talking about Tommy Maddox, one and only MVP of Vince McMahon's eXtreme Football League and quarterback for the Los Angeles eXtreme! Let's see how much trouble I get in for trying to Slashdot my school...
Your post was great. As an independent/punk fan myself, I've definitely seen bands support themselves largely off cheap merch, and I think that sounds like a good model for linux distros to try, at least as a supplement to their normal business.
Damn, I wish I hadn't spent all my mod points bumping goatse.cx posts +1, Informative...uh, I mean...
Just run it through the Google calculator, that does all kinds of unit conversions, right?
Also (and I find this a tad stupid), you aparrantly have to specifically mark good emails as NOT JUNK. Just leaving them alone isn't good enough, actually select them all, right-click and choose Mark > As Not Junk. This should help reduce false positives on spam. As for mail going to the outbox folder, I've never heard of that. Would you consider filing a bug in Bugzilla for it to help out the developers? (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org, it doesn't allow direct links from Slashdot).
This info is specific to Visual C++ 2002/2003, but it might be relevant to GCC too, I really don't know. Look at the "best practices" portion at the bottom in particular.
I normally use Firebird, but I downloaded a Mozilla build yesterday to check on a bug and it looks like resizing is off by default (and I agree it's a fairly stupid feature, but I guess since IE has it enough people clamored for it and it's an option now).
There is another bug posted in this thread, but I think the best match is actually bug 16409 (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16409 ), "Invoke spell check in browser (multiple form fields)". I encourage those interested in seeing this feature to get a Bugzilla account and vote for it, or if you're programming-inclined, dive in and write some code ;).
As per the roadmap, the plan is to eventually to get a common runtime environment that all Mozilla-based apps can run within (Firebird, Thunderbird, Chatzilla, the Sunbird calendar, etc). This will eliminate the problem of all these programs sharing significant amounts of code and wasting memory/disk space. It'll take a while though, and to be fair neither of these programs is claiming to be at release quality anyway (Firebird is working toward version 0.7, and Thunderbird is closing in on 0.2). Give them a chance, I'm confident that once these changes get made we'll see a huge reduction in bloat.
I think he meant those who are writing Qt apps include volunteer developers, and if their Qt app stops working suddenly with the new version they have less time and incentive to upgrade to it.
Funniest thing I've read in some time ;).
While I agree with you, technically the Delcaration of Independence also has no legal force, it's the constitution that matters.
I think his interpretation is correct, and it should eliminate a lot of FUD.
You might want to at least upgrade to the new Netscape 7.1, it's based on Mozilla 1.4 which is the new "stable" branch they recommend all Mozilla-based products use (the previous one was 1.0, so any older Netscapes are significantly behind in fixes and new features). I use 1.4 and love it, give it a shot.
When I first started learning to program QBASIC, I too had the Dummies book and found it nearly worthless. I actually ended up accidentally leaving it on a plane and didn't even care :). Afterward a friend recommended the "Absolute Beginner's Guide to QBASIC" which is now out of print and hard to find, but if you locate it it's an awesome tool for learning the language.
Um, like he said, the video is UNCOMPRESSED and still fits on one. The original poster said you would only be able to fit a movie on one disc if you compressed it. Obviously one of the two is wrong.
More on 64-bit Gaming and AMD's Athlon-64 Benchmarked. There's probably some other info floating around too, but these sprang to mind.
Was that the first generation of the IntelliMouse explorer or whatever you call it? I had one of those that just stopped working one day. To MS's credit, they eventually shipped me a replacement...which also broke. I got fed up and just went back to my old non-optical mouse. But that's interesting to hear it was a widespread defect with the product, guess I should have waited a little longer before adopting something as unnatural as a mouse with no ball ;)