Why restrict technology names to only 1 alphabet? LaTeX uses Greek letters, also, and requires two paragraphs in the Wikipedia article to explain the name.
Or... Go with the flow? The next time you create open-source software, call it "Garbage"? Or "Feces"? Or maybe "Vomit"?
I'm impressed with what you said. I agree with "courage and conviction" and "character, perseverance, and faith".
I haven't seen "constant vicious, destructive, vile attacks on his character". I have seen people evaluate his chances based on the idea that he is an average person, and an average person would fail at what he attempts.
I hope that Elon Musk will be especially caring toward himself. Sometimes I get the impression he pushes himself too much.
BMC sounds excellent. I like this: "The BMC often has it's own private LAN connection so management can be over a physically separate network."
In more than 11 years, I haven't seen anything like full awareness by other people of the fact that Intel is badly managed. To me, the fact that Intel has provided forced secret access to its hardware, later found to have vulnerabilities, is a tragedy for Intel, the United States, and the world.
Otellini is no longer the CEO of Intel. The present management does not seem much better. For example, Intel advertising is wacky, in my opinion. I got an email message from Intel 2 days ago that says: "Final call for awesome prizes -- train now or miss out". I don't need "awesome prizes". I need excellent technology and excellent, reliable explanation of Intel's technology.
Chapters: Front Matter
Cyber Security in the Mobile Age
Intel's Embedded Solutions: from Management to Security
Building Blocks of the Security and Management Engine
The Engine: Safeguarding Itself before Safeguarding Others
Privacy at the Next Level: Intel's Enhanced Privacy Identification (EPID) Technology
Boot with Integrity, or Don't Boot
Trust Computing, Backed by the Intel Platform Trust Technology
Unleashing Premium Entertainment with Hardware-Based Content Protection Technology
Breaking the Boundaries with Dynamically Loaded Applications
Looking Ahead: Tomorrow's Innovations Built on Today's Foundation
Back Matter
Quote from page 2:
In August 2010, Intel announced the acquisition of security giant McAfee. Paul S. Otellini, Intel's president and CEO at the time, emphasized that "security has become the third pillar of computing" when commenting on the investment. (Page 2, PDF page 8)
To me, that is typical nonsense indicating the lack of social and technical ability I see in Intel's top management. Intel now owns 49% of McAfee because it sold 51%. McAfee was never a good purchase for Intel, and was never a good company from which to purchase security software; that is my understanding.
There is a lot of valuable information in the book for readers who want to understand how intel arrived at the present situation. However, to me, the book is also full of useless nonsense. The author, Xiaoyu Ruan, tries to convince people he has understanding by providing a lot of what is known as "corporate-speak", fake communication also known as "workplace jargon". There is little depth of understanding.
Intel's inclusion in its products of secret hardware and software controlled by hidden organizations will eventually mean either a major re-organization of Intel, or the end of Intel, in my opinion. Can you supply hardware to your customers that is known to be insecure, and to have methods of access that are not clearly explained?
Suppose the same functions were implemented in a separate chip?
Could you explain why "... it can never be a good idea." I'm guessing I know less than you about the situation. Also, I don't know the meaning of "BMC".
The main question is, it seems to me: How can Intel arrange its hardware in a way that assures customers that there are no back doors? At present that seems FAR from an easy goal.
"Intel clearly didn't do a good job marketing the feature..."
I agree. It seems to me that Intel ME could be a good idea. What is extremely self-destructive to Intel is that customers have insufficient understanding and insufficient control.
It amazes me how often people comment on Slashdot in a hostile manner to try to show that they know more than someone else. I've studied that extensively. My best theory at present is that those who try to show superiority in a hostile way had bad childhoods. They were made to feel inferior by adults. By being hostile and superior, they are acting out their conflicts from childhood.
That article provides one example of experimentation about the effects on biochemistry of electromagnetic radiation (page 3, 2nd column):
After MW radiation of 3 mW/cm**2 for 0, 3 and 24 h, no significant changes in the COX I and COX IV mRNA expression levels in the rat cerebral cortex and hippocampus were found. [COX is cytochrome c oxidase.] However, after MW radiation of 30 mW/cm**2 for 0, 3 and 24 h, COX I mRNA expression in the rat cerebral cortex and hippocampus de-creased significantly, but no significant change in COX IV mRNA expression levels was found. In conclusion, MW radiation downregulates the COX I gene encoded by mitochondrial DNA in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus of rats in a dose-dependent manner. These results suggest that the changes in gene expression caused by MW radiation are important factors in mitochondrial dysfunction and brain energy failure. [cm**2 is square centimeters. Slashdot doesn't display superscripts.]
Like many scientific articles, that article is poorly written. What is the amount of radiation from a cell phone, for example, per square centimeter? By not providing context, the article can appear to be more important than it really is.
However, that article is showing interest in a VERY important direction. How does electromagnetic radiation affect biological processes? Which biochemical reactions could be affected by small amounts of radiation?
This article, RF Radiation Levels From Cellular Towers, says "A total of 25 percent of the power densities exceeds 1,000 microwatt/m**2 [1 milliwatt/m**2], which has been suggested to be the average threshold value for non-thermal biological effects." Notice that the power is in square meters. 1,000 microwatt/m**2 converted to square centimeters is 0.0001 mW/cm**2.
The first article says, "After MW radiation of 3 mW/ cm**2 for 0, 3 and 24 h, no significant changes in the COX I and COX IV mRNA expression levels in the rat cerebral cortex and hippocampus were found." That article also doesn't provide context. A power level of 3 mW/cm**2, said to have no effect, is 30,000 times what the 2nd article says is an amount of microwave energy that has no biological effect. So, cell phone towers are not emitting enough energy to have a biological effect.
Again, by not providing context, the article can appear to be more important than it really is. A far bigger problem is that the intention of the authors to mislead indicates that the authors are dishonest. That raises the question: Can anything the authors say be trusted?
What is a far more important question is how much energy does a cell phone radiate, per square centimeter, if it is next to your skin and emitting the greatest amount of energy because of having only one bar of signal strength? (One bar requires a cell ph
There is a transmitter that emits a HUGE amount of electromagnetic radiation in all wavelengths. That radiation hits your entire body when you go outside during the day.
Replies to:
"Our feelings are not doing any financial or reputational damage to the Intel brand." and to:
"... what are the geeks (such a small market that it can not be measured) going to do about it?"
It is common, I've observed, that technically-knowledgeable people believe they should not get involved with social issues. In fact, however, they have discussions like this one and have a huge amount of power.
What are the legal issues? Can you recommend Intel or AMD hardware without telling the managers of your company or your customers that the hardware is not secure? Could you go to prison for knowingly selling insecure hardware without informing the customers in a way that causes them to fully understand? Suppose a company loses millions of dollars because Intel hardware you recommended was found to be hackable, especially since that kind of vulnerability has already happened. Can you be found liable?
"Intel has been richly rewarded for implementing ME and with AMD implementing similar backdoors..."
Intel SHOULD be "richly rewarded" for that. "Implementing ME" was a good idea. The issue is that was done in a way that Intel has kept hidden, and in a way that customers who don't need that feature are not allowed to understand and cannot control.
It seems to me that the business side of Intel is not being managed well. What I know about Intel management is from talking with Intel employees, sometimes at conventions, sometimes at social events not connected with technology, visiting an Intel campus during an open house event, and from news stories.
Here is one example of what I have learned, from a 2013 news story:
Quote from that story: "When Intel applied for D1X approval, the company considered its fluoride emissions insignificant and did not include those. It was only when the company applied for the new DEQ permit required by greenhouse gas regulations that it [Intel] requested a 6.4-tons-per-year fluoride emission limit."
Intel is putting 6.4 TONS EACH YEAR of fluoride compounds into the air around its plant! Does that seem to you to be good business management?
My understanding is that there are many areas of bad business management at Intel. The central technological group, however, seems to me to be well-managed. For example, in recent years Intel has released CPUs that provide the same computational power, but lower the electrical energy required. That achievement is good for all humans on the planet.
Or maybe the equivalent of a billion dollar ad campaign against Intel.
Customers don't want spyware. It seems that, if Intel continues to try to force spyware on customers, Intel will eventually go bankrupt. That would be a very, very bad conclusion to the very, very bad management by Intel.
It is EXTREMELY important for the entire world, in my opinion, that Intel stay healthy. (The world needs AMD to stay healthy, also.)
Did the present Intel managers lack the social ability to understand that providing hidden access for hidden invaders would damage Intel's reputation? Apparently Intel needs a new CEO. Maybe other Intel managers should be replaced, also. Most of the technology development parts of Intel has seemed healthy to me; it's the business management that is failing, apparently.
This comment about Mozilla Foundation, moderated -1, seems relevant: "The vast majority of their money... Is spent on executive salaries and job titles which pretty obviously have nothing to do with improving the engine code,..."
What you wrote below fits with my experiences over the years:
"After FF became popular, they convinced its creator to join Mozilla, before ousting him from leadership of the project and redoing the whole interface with XUL, slowly stripping features away, adding addon support, bloating the browser significantly,..."
"From there it was a constant churn of improvements combined with an even bigger pile of new bugs. Bug reports and even patches were ignored as the codebase rapidly bloated."
"Google threw a bunch of money at them planning to start Chrome, but needing a successful foil against Microsoft in the intervening few years."
"Mozilla... didn't ever bother remedying their initial shortcoming: Not listening to their good employees, and not listening to their user base. Both of [those shortcomings] have come together to result in them having a large but subpar development staff."
"Their recent 'purchases' have all been projects produced by friends or family of current executive staff."
"... the executive compensation packages are only overshadowed by wikipedia, and the largest of the fortune 500 corporations."
"Eich was clearly a qualified candidate for the CEO role: he is the creator of Javascript, one of the languages that powers the open web, and had worked on Firefox and its predecessor Netscape for years. His commitment to the open web is his life's work; those credentials have never been in doubt."
That's what I thought at the time. It seemed to me that the real reason Brendan Eich was removed as CEO is that it was well known that Eich would not allow large amounts of money to be given to people at Mozilla Foundation who have no technical knowledge, or almost none.
Another quote from that article:
"... the ability to build and maintain a diverse coalition of supporters is absolutely integral to Mozilla's prospects."
A HUGE problem in my opinion, is that articles about technology are typically written by people with little or no knowledge of technology. What is "absolutely integral to Mozilla's prospects" is technical knowledge.
It would be very interesting to have a complete list of where the Mozilla Foundation money goes. The $300 million paid by Google every year was spent on what?
We need strong, caring, logical people to join the U.S. government. One way to help that happen is to take the money out of being elected. Could there be free TV channels for those who qualify and are trying to make themselves known before an election?
Another way is to pass a law that says anyone who tries to influence legislation must make all documents public, and must have no personal involvement with lawmakers or their staff.
"... it certainly doesn't happen for everyone or even most people."
I need to do a LOT of research. I often open windows and tabs in Firefox and then need to think about what I've seen, so I leave the windows and tabs open.
Then I do other research. That often results in having many windows and tabs open. Soon Firefox begins grabbing CPU power and memory. Eventually the Windows 7 Ultimate OS becomes slow. Sometimes it appears that Firefox has made Windows unstable.
Pale Moon 64-bits seems more stable than Firefox 56.0.2, so I use Pale Moon.
Waterfox sometimes brings up a message from anti-malware software I use, "Waterfox wants to act as a server." Scary.
It seems to me that Microsoft's payments to Mozilla Foundation, through Yahoo, have been successful at doing something Microsoft wanted, apparently. During Microsoft's involvement, Firefox has been degraded by making it impossible to use popular Firefox add-ons. Yes, I accept that there have been improvements in Firefox. However, it seems to me that the transition was handled badly. Maybe that was the intention of someone wanting to lower the usage of Firefox.
I reported the instability in the early days of Firefox. Lately, however, the instability seems to have become worse. By far the worst problem with Firefox is that it sometimes makes the Windows OS unstable.
This is a HUGE issue: Firefox continually increases the CPU power and memory it uses, even when you aren't looking at a Firefox window. Why? What is Firefox doing? Bitcoin mining?
Why does Firefox use so much memory when there are only a few tabs open? Why does Firefox increase memory use when it is not being viewed?
Slashdot Mirror
Why do technology people and groups give foolish names like "Rust" to what they create?
"Lisp" is a speech impediment.
"Gimp" is a person who limps or is lame.
Why restrict technology names to only 1 alphabet? LaTeX uses Greek letters, also, and requires two paragraphs in the Wikipedia article to explain the name.
Or... Go with the flow? The next time you create open-source software, call it "Garbage"? Or "Feces"? Or maybe "Vomit"?
I'm impressed with what you said. I agree with "courage and conviction" and "character, perseverance, and faith".
I haven't seen "constant vicious, destructive, vile attacks on his character". I have seen people evaluate his chances based on the idea that he is an average person, and an average person would fail at what he attempts.
I hope that Elon Musk will be especially caring toward himself. Sometimes I get the impression he pushes himself too much.
I'm worried that Elon Musk is overloading himself. I'm extremely impressed with his accomplishments, but I think he doesn't give himself enough rest.
I think Elon Musk is overloaded. However, it amazes me and other people that he can accomplish so much more than other people.
Clearly, we need Elon Musk for these jobs:
President of the United States,
Head of Alphabet, Inc.
Thanks VERY much for your reply.
BMC sounds excellent. I like this: "The BMC often has it's own private LAN connection so management can be over a physically separate network."
In more than 11 years, I haven't seen anything like full awareness by other people of the fact that Intel is badly managed. To me, the fact that Intel has provided forced secret access to its hardware, later found to have vulnerabilities, is a tragedy for Intel, the United States, and the world.
I mentioned that in another comment to this Slashdot story: FREE BOOK about the Intel Management Engine. Part of what I said: "A Slashdot comment of mine from 11 1/2 years ago: More Intel employees should say in public what they have told me in private: Intel CEO Paul Otellini is not a competent leader. He lacks social ability. (June 09, 2006)"
Otellini is no longer the CEO of Intel. The present management does not seem much better. For example, Intel advertising is wacky, in my opinion. I got an email message from Intel 2 days ago that says: "Final call for awesome prizes -- train now or miss out". I don't need "awesome prizes". I need excellent technology and excellent, reliable explanation of Intel's technology.
That book is available for FREE DOWNLOAD: Platform Embedded Security Technology Revealed -- Safeguarding the Future of Computing with Intel Embedded Security and Management Engine (PDF file)
Chapters:
Front Matter
Cyber Security in the Mobile Age
Intel's Embedded Solutions: from Management to Security
Building Blocks of the Security and Management Engine
The Engine: Safeguarding Itself before Safeguarding Others
Privacy at the Next Level: Intel's Enhanced Privacy Identification (EPID) Technology
Boot with Integrity, or Don't Boot
Trust Computing, Backed by the Intel Platform Trust Technology
Unleashing Premium Entertainment with Hardware-Based Content Protection Technology
Breaking the Boundaries with Dynamically Loaded Applications
Looking Ahead: Tomorrow's Innovations Built on Today's Foundation
Back Matter
Quote from page 2:
In August 2010, Intel announced the acquisition of security giant McAfee. Paul S. Otellini, Intel's president and CEO at the time, emphasized that "security has become the third pillar of computing" when commenting on the investment. (Page 2, PDF page 8)
To me, that is typical nonsense indicating the lack of social and technical ability I see in Intel's top management. Intel now owns 49% of McAfee because it sold 51%. McAfee was never a good purchase for Intel, and was never a good company from which to purchase security software; that is my understanding.
A Slashdot comment of mine from 11 1/2 years ago: More Intel employees should say in public what they have told me in private: Intel CEO Paul Otellini is not a competent leader. He lacks social ability. (June 09, 2006)
There is a lot of valuable information in the book for readers who want to understand how intel arrived at the present situation. However, to me, the book is also full of useless nonsense. The author, Xiaoyu Ruan, tries to convince people he has understanding by providing a lot of what is known as "corporate-speak", fake communication also known as "workplace jargon". There is little depth of understanding.
Intel's inclusion in its products of secret hardware and software controlled by hidden organizations will eventually mean either a major re-organization of Intel, or the end of Intel, in my opinion. Can you supply hardware to your customers that is known to be insecure, and to have methods of access that are not clearly explained?
"BMC"?
Suppose the same functions were implemented in a separate chip?
Could you explain why "... it can never be a good idea." I'm guessing I know less than you about the situation. Also, I don't know the meaning of "BMC".
The main question is, it seems to me: How can Intel arrange its hardware in a way that assures customers that there are no back doors? At present that seems FAR from an easy goal.
"Intel clearly didn't do a good job marketing the feature..."
I agree. It seems to me that Intel ME could be a good idea. What is extremely self-destructive to Intel is that customers have insufficient understanding and insufficient control.
Intel news stories (April 17, 2017 )
Articles about spyware in CPUs (June 18, 2017)
"ME is turning into a colossal dumpster fire." (December 10, 2017 )
"Use a third party build of Firefox or Chromium."
Can you recommend 3rd party builds? I need a browser that respects my choices of add-ons.
Pale Moon 64-bits seems more stable than Firefox 56.0.2, so I use Pale Moon.
Waterfox sometimes brings up a message from anti-malware software I use, "Waterfox wants to act as a server." Scary.
What I said in the grandparent comment about electromagnetic radiation is exactly correct.
It amazes me how often people comment on Slashdot in a hostile manner to try to show that they know more than someone else. I've studied that extensively. My best theory at present is that those who try to show superiority in a hostile way had bad childhoods. They were made to feel inferior by adults. By being hostile and superior, they are acting out their conflicts from childhood.
The best (but not excellent) scientific article I have found about the effects of electromagnetic radiation on biological chemistry is Effects of microwave radiation on brain energy metabolism and related mechanisms. (Feb. 17, 2015) A PDF file of the article is available.
That article provides one example of experimentation about the effects on biochemistry of electromagnetic radiation (page 3, 2nd column):
Like many scientific articles, that article is poorly written. What is the amount of radiation from a cell phone, for example, per square centimeter? By not providing context, the article can appear to be more important than it really is.
However, that article is showing interest in a VERY important direction. How does electromagnetic radiation affect biological processes? Which biochemical reactions could be affected by small amounts of radiation?
This article, RF Radiation Levels From Cellular Towers, says "A total of 25 percent of the power densities exceeds 1,000 microwatt/m**2 [1 milliwatt/m**2], which has been suggested to be the average threshold value for non-thermal biological effects." Notice that the power is in square meters. 1,000 microwatt/m**2 converted to square centimeters is 0.0001 mW/cm**2.
The first article says, "After MW radiation of 3 mW/ cm**2 for 0, 3 and 24 h, no significant changes in the COX I and COX IV mRNA expression levels in the rat cerebral cortex and hippocampus were found." That article also doesn't provide context. A power level of 3 mW/cm**2, said to have no effect, is 30,000 times what the 2nd article says is an amount of microwave energy that has no biological effect. So, cell phone towers are not emitting enough energy to have a biological effect.
Again, by not providing context, the article can appear to be more important than it really is. A far bigger problem is that the intention of the authors to mislead indicates that the authors are dishonest. That raises the question: Can anything the authors say be trusted?
What is a far more important question is how much energy does a cell phone radiate, per square centimeter, if it is next to your skin and emitting the greatest amount of energy because of having only one bar of signal strength? (One bar requires a cell ph
TRUE JOKE: Get ready to be SCARED!!
There is a transmitter that emits a HUGE amount of electromagnetic radiation in all wavelengths. That radiation hits your entire body when you go outside during the day.
The transmitter is called the Sun.
Mozilla is badly managed and badly communicated.
Wow! That's amazing. The title at that link: Equifax hired a music major as chief security officer and she has just retired.
Equifax Faces Mounting Costs and Investigations From Breach.
The Equifax Breach Was Entirely Preventable
But still, the Intel and Microsoft spyware seems more destructive.
Intel destroying itself?
Microsoft's history is filled with abuse. Important 3rd comment: Possibly some other person from India...
Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made.
Replies to:
"Our feelings are not doing any financial or reputational damage to the Intel brand."
and to:
"... what are the geeks (such a small market that it can not be measured) going to do about it?"
It is common, I've observed, that technically-knowledgeable people believe they should not get involved with social issues. In fact, however, they have discussions like this one and have a huge amount of power.
What are the legal issues? Can you recommend Intel or AMD hardware without telling the managers of your company or your customers that the hardware is not secure? Could you go to prison for knowingly selling insecure hardware without informing the customers in a way that causes them to fully understand? Suppose a company loses millions of dollars because Intel hardware you recommended was found to be hackable, especially since that kind of vulnerability has already happened. Can you be found liable?
"Intel has been richly rewarded for implementing ME and with AMD implementing similar backdoors..."
Intel SHOULD be "richly rewarded" for that. "Implementing ME" was a good idea. The issue is that was done in a way that Intel has kept hidden, and in a way that customers who don't need that feature are not allowed to understand and cannot control.
It seems to me that the business side of Intel is not being managed well. What I know about Intel management is from talking with Intel employees, sometimes at conventions, sometimes at social events not connected with technology, visiting an Intel campus during an open house event, and from news stories.
Here is one example of what I have learned, from a 2013 news story:
Intel has been emitting fluoride for years without state knowledge, permit. (Sept. 24, 2013)
Quote from that story: "When Intel applied for D1X approval, the company considered its fluoride emissions insignificant and did not include those. It was only when the company applied for the new DEQ permit required by greenhouse gas regulations that it [Intel] requested a 6.4-tons-per-year fluoride emission limit."
Intel is putting 6.4 TONS EACH YEAR of fluoride compounds into the air around its plant! Does that seem to you to be good business management?
My understanding is that there are many areas of bad business management at Intel. The central technological group, however, seems to me to be well-managed. For example, in recent years Intel has released CPUs that provide the same computational power, but lower the electrical energy required. That achievement is good for all humans on the planet.
"ME is turning into a colossal dumpster fire."
Or maybe the equivalent of a billion dollar ad campaign against Intel.
Customers don't want spyware. It seems that, if Intel continues to try to force spyware on customers, Intel will eventually go bankrupt. That would be a very, very bad conclusion to the very, very bad management by Intel.
It is EXTREMELY important for the entire world, in my opinion, that Intel stay healthy. (The world needs AMD to stay healthy, also.)
Did the present Intel managers lack the social ability to understand that providing hidden access for hidden invaders would damage Intel's reputation? Apparently Intel needs a new CEO. Maybe other Intel managers should be replaced, also. Most of the technology development parts of Intel has seemed healthy to me; it's the business management that is failing, apparently.
The world was told more than 3 years ago about the hidden control: Secret of Intel Management Engine by Igor Skochinsky. (Mar 12, 2014)
Intel was told that there would be problems: Intel's Management Engine is a security hazard, and users need a way to disable it. (May 8, 2017)
Did the present managers lack the social ability to understand that it was likely that hackers would find defects in the Intel Management Engine? One article: Intel Patches Major Flaws in the Intel Management Engine. (Nov 22, 2017) Intel's reaction: Intel Management Engine Critical Firmware Update (Intel-SA-00086). (Dec 5, 2017)
This comment about Mozilla Foundation, moderated -1, seems relevant: "The vast majority of their money... Is spent on executive salaries and job titles which pretty obviously have nothing to do with improving the engine code, ..."
What you wrote below fits with my experiences over the years: "After FF became popular, they convinced its creator to join Mozilla, before ousting him from leadership of the project and redoing the whole interface with XUL, slowly stripping features away, adding addon support, bloating the browser significantly, ..."
... didn't ever bother remedying their initial shortcoming: Not listening to their good employees, and not listening to their user base. Both of [those shortcomings] have come together to result in them having a large but subpar development staff."
"From there it was a constant churn of improvements combined with an even bigger pile of new bugs. Bug reports and even patches were ignored as the codebase rapidly bloated."
"Google threw a bunch of money at them planning to start Chrome, but needing a successful foil against Microsoft in the intervening few years."
"Mozilla
"Their recent 'purchases' have all been projects produced by friends or family of current executive staff."
"... the executive compensation packages are only overshadowed by wikipedia, and the largest of the fortune 500 corporations."
This 2014 article tells some of the history: Mozilla still has three big problems -- and now it needs a new CEO (April 4, 2014, last modified on Feb. 21, 2017)
Brendan Eich's coming-out party ended the Mozilla way: free, open -- and shut (April 4, 2014)
Quote from the article immediately above:
"Eich was clearly a qualified candidate for the CEO role: he is the creator of Javascript, one of the languages that powers the open web, and had worked on Firefox and its predecessor Netscape for years. His commitment to the open web is his life's work; those credentials have never been in doubt."
That's what I thought at the time. It seemed to me that the real reason Brendan Eich was removed as CEO is that it was well known that Eich would not allow large amounts of money to be given to people at Mozilla Foundation who have no technical knowledge, or almost none.
Another quote from that article:
"... the ability to build and maintain a diverse coalition of supporters is absolutely integral to Mozilla's prospects."
A HUGE problem in my opinion, is that articles about technology are typically written by people with little or no knowledge of technology. What is "absolutely integral to Mozilla's prospects" is technical knowledge.
It would be very interesting to have a complete list of where the Mozilla Foundation money goes. The $300 million paid by Google every year was spent on what?
During the years Microsoft influenced Mozilla Foundation there was considerable damage to Mozilla Foundation's reputation. Was that the 3rd step of Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?
Don't post hostile comments on Slashdot. They waste everyone's time.
We need strong, caring, logical people to join the U.S. government. One way to help that happen is to take the money out of being elected. Could there be free TV channels for those who qualify and are trying to make themselves known before an election?
Another way is to pass a law that says anyone who tries to influence legislation must make all documents public, and must have no personal involvement with lawmakers or their staff.
"... it certainly doesn't happen for everyone or even most people."
I need to do a LOT of research. I often open windows and tabs in Firefox and then need to think about what I've seen, so I leave the windows and tabs open.
Then I do other research. That often results in having many windows and tabs open. Soon Firefox begins grabbing CPU power and memory. Eventually the Windows 7 Ultimate OS becomes slow. Sometimes it appears that Firefox has made Windows unstable.
Pale Moon 64-bits seems more stable than Firefox 56.0.2, so I use Pale Moon.
Waterfox sometimes brings up a message from anti-malware software I use, "Waterfox wants to act as a server." Scary.
It seems to me that Microsoft's payments to Mozilla Foundation, through Yahoo, have been successful at doing something Microsoft wanted, apparently. During Microsoft's involvement, Firefox has been degraded by making it impossible to use popular Firefox add-ons. Yes, I accept that there have been improvements in Firefox. However, it seems to me that the transition was handled badly. Maybe that was the intention of someone wanting to lower the usage of Firefox.
I reported the instability in the early days of Firefox. Lately, however, the instability seems to have become worse. By far the worst problem with Firefox is that it sometimes makes the Windows OS unstable.
This is a HUGE issue: Firefox continually increases the CPU power and memory it uses, even when you aren't looking at a Firefox window. Why? What is Firefox doing? Bitcoin mining?
Why does Firefox use so much memory when there are only a few tabs open? Why does Firefox increase memory use when it is not being viewed?