Re:Oh, lovely, it's spyware
on
Explorer Destroyer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Define spyware. What is spyware? If it's "anything that collects any information" then all the visitor counters are also spyware. Heck, the whole web would be a huge network of spyware because at least your IP and request URL is collected in the web server log!
Fact is, the script does not collect any personal information. All it does is collecting the host address of the site that has that script. It's entirely anymous. It does not breach privacy in any way. There is no rational reason to oppose it.
And that's exactly the reason why IE must die. If my site is W3C compliant I shouldn't have to use dirty hacks like that to make it render correctly in IE! I shouldn't have to spend 50% of my time developing workarounds for IE!
And I say YES to this campaign. Firefox is about standards? Sure, but what good are those standards when the browser that 80% of the users use can't render those standards properly? Every other single browser out there can - but not IE. IE is holding the standards adoption back. I'm sick and tired to have to spend 50% of my time tweaking my W3C-compliant websites to make it render correctly in IE, often resulting in IE-specific hacks using conditional statement comments.
Apparently, spreading better browsers by word-of-mouth and quality alone is not enough. Firefox has around 10% market share but that's not high enough. And many people refuse to install Firefox/Opera/AnyOtherBetterBrowser because they fear the unknown. It's time for more aggressive weaponry.
Uhm no it isn't. Every single browser except IE has superb support for W3C standards. As long as any non-IE browser gets more market share, webmasters who want to design a website according to the W3C standards will be able to do so, instead of holding themselves back and resorting to IE-specific hacks to make the website render correctly in IE, just because IE's the only one that doesn't render things properly.
I expected a post like this to be modded up to +5 Insightful. But frankly, you people miss the damn point!
Look at all the IE-only websites. Firefox has reached about 10% market share now, yet there are still people out there who develop for IE only, with no legitimate reason to do so. If you speak to those webmasters, you'll probably hear something like "I don't care about the minority". Why is this a problem? Because as long as IE has the most market share, it holds back the W3C standards!
For example, IE doesn't support PNG alpha channels. This is 2006, every single browser but IE supports alpha channels, there's absolutely no reason for IE to not support it! Yes yes I know about IE 7, but how many years will it take before it's out? IE 7 won't have a significant market share for a long long long long time, and during all that time we're stuck in the no-alpha-channel-dark-ages. And yes I know about the PNG hack, but I shouldn't have to use it! And the PNG hack doesn't work for background images (translucent background images can be very useful for rounded borders or shadows).
IE's (at least version 6's) XHTML support sucks. It has almost no XHTML support. XHTML is rendered as HTML 4, but a bigger problem is that IE doesn't even support the application/html+xml MIME type!! As a result I'm forced to configure my web server to send text/html as MIME type, causing all the other browsers to interpret the document as HTML 4 instead of XHTML. This makes XHTML almost useless.
CSS support. IE doesn't support the 'overflow' property, for example. IE's support for 'margin' and the 'em' unit is broken.
And numberous other things. When I design a website, I test it in Firefox and Konqueror, and validate the code with the W3C validator. If it's valid, and it works on Firefox and Konqueror, then it usually works on Opera too. But not IE. Almost every single time I have to use IE conditional statements to include a custom, IE-specific CSS to fix the layout.
This has got to stop. As a webmaster, I'm sick of hacking my website to be IE-compatible while I'm already W3C-compliant, and I'm sure many webmasters are sick of it too. The only way to fight this is to ensure that IE loses more of it's market share. We cannot wait for IE7, that takes too long and who knows what else Microsoft refuses to fix. Yet Firefox still doesn't have more than 10% market share. It's time for more aggressive weaponry, because apparently you can't win by playing the nice guy. Plus I'm sick and tired of all the IE-specific sites. The only way to get rid of them is by decreasing IE's market share.
I don't care what browser will have the most market share, as long as it's not IE (or IE shells). Every single modern browser out there has good support for W3C standards - except IE.
Although DirectX abstracts hardware acceleration, there are still differences between video cards. For example, take a look at the requirements of Ragnarok Online. The page lists only 3 supported chipsets. Other chipsets are marked as "not recommended". Why? Because of differences between DirectX driver implementation and because of bugs in the video card. Back when I had an ATI Rage 128 (I use Nvidia cards now), some icons in the game don't display correctly: they were displayed as 8x8 icons, scaled up to 32x32. When I bought an Nvidia card, the icons suddenly displayed correctly! But that's not all. The first Nvidia card (the one I'm using now is my third) I bought didn't work at all. Playing other 3D games worked fine, but when playing Ragnarok Online, the screen became red and the graphics became corrupted. I downloaded the latest drivers, but that didn't help. I brought the card back to the shop and got a new one, but that one had the same problem.
Conclusion: it is an illusion to think that if you develop for DirectX, it will work on all Windows installation. It doesn't.
Heck, DirectX isn't even the only problem. What about networking? I develop a custom client for an online game, and about one out of a hundred people send me emails about networking problems. Those include: - The app cannot connect to the server because they're behind a firewall, and they either don't know how to configure the firewall, or they don't have administrator access. - The app cannot connect to the server because they're behind a proxy. My app automatically uses IE's proxy settings but apparently sometimes it just doesn't work. I've never been able to find out what exactly causes the problem because I can't even reproduce it. - The app cannot can connect to the server but for some reason the connection closes prematurely. The client didn't send any incorrect data and the server had no reason to close the connection. I can't reproduce the problem at all but they can reproduce it every time. - Other WinSock problems. Recently someone told me he gets a "Socket Error # 11004". Error 11004 is WSANO_DATA. According to MSDN, that is:
Valid name, no data record of requested type. The requested name is valid and was found in the database, but it does not have the correct associated data being resolved for. The usual example for this is a host name-to-address translation attempt (using gethostbyname or WSAAsyncGetHostByName) which uses the DNS (Domain Name Server). An MX record is returned but no A record--indicating the host itself exists, but is not directly reachable.
Yet the web browser can access that domain just fine. Again, this is yet another networking bug that I've never been able to reproduce.
Final conclusion: it is an illusion to think that if you develop for Windows you will have consistency. Apps break for all kinds of weird and unknown reasons that you can never reproduce yourself.
"It's a matter of scale, really. Longhorn is the biggest failed project in software development history"
Yeah that's what you say. And a few years from now, everybody will be happily using Vista, just like they did with XP, not caring what you said about it. As much as I hate Windows, people will continue to use it no matter what label you throw at it.
I'll give you a cookie if manage to do so. But that's only half the solution. Will managers actually look at (and understand) the differences? If not, then it won't help at all.
It doesn't matter what you think, or what any of us think about domain parking. Domain parking is NOT forbidden, and managers believe in Netcraft reports. Those are facts, and there is nothing we can do to change those facts.
How about reading the website before you post? Let me quote:
Microsoft has been paying the large domain resellers to move their "parked" sites to IIS on Microsoft Server. Moving the parked customers of a single large reseller, GoDaddy.com, caused a shift of 4.5 Million domain names, or 5% of total server share from Apache to Microsoft IIS in the Netcraft report. This is an "appearance" change only, because the sites involved have no content. But managers believe figures like those in the Netcraft report, and act on them. It's time for the Free Software / Open Source community to fight back.
So regardless of whether it's a good or bad thing, it is necessary.
Then how do you explain the fact that the Chinese government was trying to calm down the protesters? It would be very illogical to do that if they're deliberately slamming Japan. And before you come up with any conspiracy theories: I read about it in a Dutch newspaper.
The Chinese government was willing to send FUCKING TANKS against unarmed students.
And how many of those FUCKING TANKS rode over people? The infamous tank man didn't get killed by the tank. Watch the video for yourself. You clearly see that he tries to block a tank, and the tank tries to bypass him, but failed, and eventually stopped, without killing him.
I am not trying to start a flame war here, but this idea that any entity - person, government, etc., will just suddenly turn heel and become the complete opposite of what they've been for years, without some outside force acting upon it, is rediculous.
Nobody claimed that the devils suddenly turned into angels. But it is true the Chinese government has changed in the past 15 years, and will keep changing in the future. China is not a paradise, but the point is, China isn't as bad as the foreign media claim it is.
A good example is criticizing the government. Most of you think that everybody who criticizes the government will be thrown to jail. But when I went to China, 3 months ago, there were several critical stories in the local newspaper and the television! Even Peoples' Daily, the state newspaper, pulishes some critical articles. And things like that happen regularly. Fact is, the government has become a lot more open than they used to be.
I won't reply on everything as I don't know enough about all your points.
There are an estimated 800 million people living in rural districts who have been left behind by the economic boom and who are increasingly angry at the lack of jobs, lack of basic health care and the gaudy display of wealth to which they have no access.
Did you read the newspaper lately? A few months ago the Chinese government announced that, over the next few years, it's going to invest several billions into improving the economic situations of the rural districts.
Recently some security forces shot a bunch of peasants in southern China for protesting over local governmental corruption.
Dude, the peasants attacked the security forces! What do you expect the security forces to do, just stand their and let themselves be killed? What'll happen in America if you attack the police? What'll happen in Europe when you attack the police?
The point being, while China isn't a paradise, it isn't as bad as the media makes it seem to be.
Since my dad can't write English I'll translate for him. This is a serious reply by the way.
The 'paying people to slander China' thing is not done by an agency and not done formally. Instead, it is done informally, by bosses of big media companies. A big part of the US society is controlled by a few large media companies. So a bosses (who don't like China) of some big media companies pay some of their employees to spread bad rumors, not only because the bosses dislike China, but also to gain more sales. After all, bad news sells better than good news. It is similar to astroturfing. While people in the US are allowed to criticize the government, employees won't dare to criticize their bosses or reveal this in fear of losing their jobs.
And I suppose things never change? Mao is dead. D.E.A.D. The government is being replaced by new people. In fact the Chinese government has become a lot more open than 15 years ago. 20 ago they'd put you in prison for every wrong word you speak, these days they're not so strict anymore. All in all, it certainly is heading the right way.
I've visited China multiple times since I began living in Europe. My last visit is just from 3 months ago. You don't see armies marching through the city every day.
Oh could you explain again to us why your family chose not to live in China anymore?
Oh yes I certainly could. Economic reasons, not political reasons. China was poor in the late 1980s so my dad came here for work. I and my mother followed a few years later.
I'll probably get modded down because 99% of the Slashdotters are anti-Chinese, but someone has to say it.
Your kind of posts is exactly what they're talking about. There is absolutely no strong evidence that the Chinese government is behind it. But even then, you're already speculating that the government is involved even when they say the government isn't. Your "they're guilty until proven innocent" is exactly the irresponsible behavior they mean.
Yes I'm Chinese. My parents are Chinese. I was born in China. And no we don't live in China. Yet I still think all the mud throwing at the Chinese government is rediculous. Everybody here's making it sound like China is a hell in which you will be executed if you try to pronounce the 'd' of 'democracy'. China is not North Korea. While I think the Chinese government should be more open, they're not the Big Bad Stalinist Communist Overlords everybody claims they are.
My dad - yes yes he does NOT live in China - has an even stronger opinion than I have. He firmly believes that people are getting paid by the US government to bash the Chinese government. When the Chinese government does something, everybody yells 'OMG those communist bastards are 3v1l!!!'. But when the US government does something, almost nobody says a word.
Again, just to argue with you conspiracy theorists: NO we don't live in China. The Chinese government isn't forcing me to write this. I live in Europe.
Slashdot Mirror
Define spyware. What is spyware? If it's "anything that collects any information" then all the visitor counters are also spyware. Heck, the whole web would be a huge network of spyware because at least your IP and request URL is collected in the web server log!
Fact is, the script does not collect any personal information. All it does is collecting the host address of the site that has that script. It's entirely anymous. It does not breach privacy in any way. There is no rational reason to oppose it.
And that's exactly the reason why IE must die. If my site is W3C compliant I shouldn't have to use dirty hacks like that to make it render correctly in IE! I shouldn't have to spend 50% of my time developing workarounds for IE!
And I say YES to this campaign. Firefox is about standards? Sure, but what good are those standards when the browser that 80% of the users use can't render those standards properly? Every other single browser out there can - but not IE. IE is holding the standards adoption back. I'm sick and tired to have to spend 50% of my time tweaking my W3C-compliant websites to make it render correctly in IE, often resulting in IE-specific hacks using conditional statement comments.
Apparently, spreading better browsers by word-of-mouth and quality alone is not enough. Firefox has around 10% market share but that's not high enough. And many people refuse to install Firefox/Opera/AnyOtherBetterBrowser because they fear the unknown. It's time for more aggressive weaponry.
Uhm no it isn't. Every single browser except IE has superb support for W3C standards. As long as any non-IE browser gets more market share, webmasters who want to design a website according to the W3C standards will be able to do so, instead of holding themselves back and resorting to IE-specific hacks to make the website render correctly in IE, just because IE's the only one that doesn't render things properly.
Look at all the IE-only websites. Firefox has reached about 10% market share now, yet there are still people out there who develop for IE only, with no legitimate reason to do so. If you speak to those webmasters, you'll probably hear something like "I don't care about the minority". Why is this a problem? Because as long as IE has the most market share, it holds back the W3C standards!
This has got to stop. As a webmaster, I'm sick of hacking my website to be IE-compatible while I'm already W3C-compliant, and I'm sure many webmasters are sick of it too. The only way to fight this is to ensure that IE loses more of it's market share. We cannot wait for IE7, that takes too long and who knows what else Microsoft refuses to fix. Yet Firefox still doesn't have more than 10% market share. It's time for more aggressive weaponry, because apparently you can't win by playing the nice guy. Plus I'm sick and tired of all the IE-specific sites. The only way to get rid of them is by decreasing IE's market share.
I don't care what browser will have the most market share, as long as it's not IE (or IE shells). Every single modern browser out there has good support for W3C standards - except IE.
Conclusion: it is an illusion to think that if you develop for DirectX, it will work on all Windows installation. It doesn't.
Heck, DirectX isn't even the only problem. What about networking? I develop a custom client for an online game, and about one out of a hundred people send me emails about networking problems. Those include:
- The app cannot connect to the server because they're behind a firewall, and they either don't know how to configure the firewall, or they don't have administrator access.
- The app cannot connect to the server because they're behind a proxy. My app automatically uses IE's proxy settings but apparently sometimes it just doesn't work. I've never been able to find out what exactly causes the problem because I can't even reproduce it.
- The app cannot can connect to the server but for some reason the connection closes prematurely. The client didn't send any incorrect data and the server had no reason to close the connection. I can't reproduce the problem at all but they can reproduce it every time.
- Other WinSock problems. Recently someone told me he gets a "Socket Error # 11004". Error 11004 is WSANO_DATA. According to MSDN, that is:
Yet the web browser can access that domain just fine. Again, this is yet another networking bug that I've never been able to reproduce.
Final conclusion: it is an illusion to think that if you develop for Windows you will have consistency. Apps break for all kinds of weird and unknown reasons that you can never reproduce yourself.
Exactly, but that doesn't matter. The point is, people will use it no matter what.
"It's a matter of scale, really. Longhorn is the biggest failed project in software development history"
Yeah that's what you say. And a few years from now, everybody will be happily using Vista, just like they did with XP, not caring what you said about it. As much as I hate Windows, people will continue to use it no matter what label you throw at it.
I'll give you a cookie if manage to do so. But that's only half the solution. Will managers actually look at (and understand) the differences? If not, then it won't help at all.
It doesn't matter what you think, or what any of us think about domain parking. Domain parking is NOT forbidden, and managers believe in Netcraft reports. Those are facts, and there is nothing we can do to change those facts.
So regardless of whether it's a good or bad thing, it is necessary.
"Enhanced performance" can also mean "GUIs now redraw faster".
Then how do you explain the fact that the Chinese government was trying to calm down the protesters? It would be very illogical to do that if they're deliberately slamming Japan. And before you come up with any conspiracy theories: I read about it in a Dutch newspaper.
Furthermore, what proof do you have?
And how many of those FUCKING TANKS rode over people? The infamous tank man didn't get killed by the tank. Watch the video for yourself. You clearly see that he tries to block a tank, and the tank tries to bypass him, but failed, and eventually stopped, without killing him.
Nobody claimed that the devils suddenly turned into angels. But it is true the Chinese government has changed in the past 15 years, and will keep changing in the future. China is not a paradise, but the point is, China isn't as bad as the foreign media claim it is.
A good example is criticizing the government. Most of you think that everybody who criticizes the government will be thrown to jail. But when I went to China, 3 months ago, there were several critical stories in the local newspaper and the television! Even Peoples' Daily, the state newspaper, pulishes some critical articles. And things like that happen regularly. Fact is, the government has become a lot more open than they used to be.
Did you read the newspaper lately? A few months ago the Chinese government announced that, over the next few years, it's going to invest several billions into improving the economic situations of the rural districts.
Dude, the peasants attacked the security forces! What do you expect the security forces to do, just stand their and let themselves be killed? What'll happen in America if you attack the police? What'll happen in Europe when you attack the police?
The point being, while China isn't a paradise, it isn't as bad as the media makes it seem to be.
One word: yes. Things have changed a lot since 1989.
Yes.
Or perhaps it's because Japan invaded China in WO2, and slaughtered many people? Oh no, never.
You'd know if you read my other two replies on that question!
My dad came here in the late 1980s for economic reasons. Back then China was poor.
Since my dad can't write English I'll translate for him. This is a serious reply by the way.
The 'paying people to slander China' thing is not done by an agency and not done formally. Instead, it is done informally, by bosses of big media companies. A big part of the US society is controlled by a few large media companies. So a bosses (who don't like China) of some big media companies pay some of their employees to spread bad rumors, not only because the bosses dislike China, but also to gain more sales. After all, bad news sells better than good news. It is similar to astroturfing. While people in the US are allowed to criticize the government, employees won't dare to criticize their bosses or reveal this in fear of losing their jobs.
And I suppose things never change? Mao is dead. D.E.A.D. The government is being replaced by new people. In fact the Chinese government has become a lot more open than 15 years ago. 20 ago they'd put you in prison for every wrong word you speak, these days they're not so strict anymore. All in all, it certainly is heading the right way.
I've visited China multiple times since I began living in Europe. My last visit is just from 3 months ago. You don't see armies marching through the city every day.
Oh yes I certainly could. Economic reasons, not political reasons. China was poor in the late 1980s so my dad came here for work. I and my mother followed a few years later.
Maybe on Slashdot people complain, but do you see it in the BBC headlines?
Netherlands.
For work. My dad came here because China was poor at the time (the late 1980s). I and my mother followed a few years later.
See? No conspiracies.
I'll probably get modded down because 99% of the Slashdotters are anti-Chinese, but someone has to say it.
Your kind of posts is exactly what they're talking about. There is absolutely no strong evidence that the Chinese government is behind it. But even then, you're already speculating that the government is involved even when they say the government isn't. Your "they're guilty until proven innocent" is exactly the irresponsible behavior they mean.
Yes I'm Chinese. My parents are Chinese. I was born in China. And no we don't live in China.
Yet I still think all the mud throwing at the Chinese government is rediculous. Everybody here's making it sound like China is a hell in which you will be executed if you try to pronounce the 'd' of 'democracy'. China is not North Korea. While I think the Chinese government should be more open, they're not the Big Bad Stalinist Communist Overlords everybody claims they are.
My dad - yes yes he does NOT live in China - has an even stronger opinion than I have. He firmly believes that people are getting paid by the US government to bash the Chinese government. When the Chinese government does something, everybody yells 'OMG those communist bastards are 3v1l!!!'. But when the US government does something, almost nobody says a word.
Again, just to argue with you conspiracy theorists: NO we don't live in China. The Chinese government isn't forcing me to write this. I live in Europe.