"As soon as Google releases an add on platform..."
They haven't done that yet. If they do, it is anyone's guess whether Firefox add-ons will be supported, or whether the hard-working AdBlock Plus and NoScript teams will want to develop and maintain a new platform.
There is a huge problem here: Making money through advertising makes it necessary that people see the ads. Google has been spending $50,000,000 per year on Firefox. After Chrome is fully developed, Chrome will likely become the new favorite, replacing the buggy, CPU hogging, badly managed Firefox. Then Google can stop spending that money on Firefox.
This may be several years away, but it is a conflict that is certainly there.
But it is all somewhat meaningless, whether Chrome passes ACID3 or not, since Chrome is meant to support a company that sells advertising.
I'm guessing that Chrome will never have AdBlock Plus and NoScript.
It's all about control. Firefox allows you to control what you read. Many advertising companies try to change readers into time-wasting, ad-reading, money-wasting robots.
Those who don't like being the target of aggressive behavior and want control over their lives will need to continue to use Firefox, no matter how technically superior Chrome is.
Agreed. My experience is that JkDefrag is FAR better than the very quirky and badly named Diskeeper. Quote from the first page:
"JkDefrag is a disk defragmenter and optimizer for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/2008/X64. Completely automatic and very easy to use, fast, low overhead, with several optimization strategies, and can handle floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows. Included are a Windows version, a commandline version (for scheduling by the task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts), a screensaver version, a DLL library (for use from programming languages), versions for Windows X64, and the complete sources."
Diskeeper? Is that Dis keeper, a keeper of disrespect? Or Disk eeper, something that causes a fear of disks? Shouldn't there be another K?
If you want to be abused by a defragmentation program, you will have to pay dearly. Sorry, no abuse with the free and open source JkDefrag; remember the old saying, "You get what you pay for."
My understanding is that Microsoft Windows is allowed to have so many
vulnerabilities because vulnerabilities make Microsoft more money. See the
July 17, 2005 New York Times article, Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster.
Windows allows several degradation paths, all of which make more money
for Microsoft. People who don't know how to maintain Windows, a very difficult
and very technical task, buy new computers and in doing that pay for another
copy of another vulnerable version of Windows. Here are a few of the paths of
degradation:
Fragmentation. Defragmentation is not built in, customers must know how to
run it. Without defragmentation of files on the hard drive, computers become
very slow.
Temporary files. A study we did showed temporary files store in more than
40 places. Temporary files on computers we analyzed showed operation
enormously because Windows becomes slow when the operating system partition is
slow.
General sloppiness. It's difficult to maintain Windows because
there are so many areas of sloppiness.
You said, "There are interviews, articles, various live events, etc. etc.
that show Gates and Ballmer can quite capably talk about technology."
Over the years I've seen a lot by and about Bill Gates and Steve
Ballmer, but what has surprised me is how little technical understanding they
demonstrate.
Microsoft ignored the internet until it became a big thing, then every
Microsoft web page said "internet" even when it wasn't appropriate.
Microsoft bought Hotmail. (A woman friend of mine deleted all messages
from Hotmail, because she thought they were porn. LOL)
Microsoft did not have a search engine until it became a big thing,
then Microsoft could not compete with Google.
Would a technically knowledgeable person have released Windows Vista?
Why is this relevant now? Because I don't see how Microsoft buying
Yahoo's failed search service will help Microsoft's failed search service. And
I interpret Steve Ballmer saying he isn't interested as possibly just
bargaining for a lower price.
Gates wrote a Basic interpreter. Did you ever write a program
for it? I did. It was quirky and limited and poorly documented. Writing an
interpreter certainly qualifies someone as interested in technology. But the
idealism that is required to be influential in thinking about technology was,
and is, lacking.
Microsoft bought DOS for about $80,000. About 10 man-years of
programming effort were put into DOS. (Volunteers made the FreeDOS
work-alike.) That made Microsoft $40 billion dollars, and gave the company the
money to hire people who knew how to write Windows. It seems to me that the
unusual circumstance of being able to take something worth about $1,000,000
and turn it into $40 billion is what made Microsoft successful, not unusual
technical insight.
How much of "Microsoft doing really well under Ballmer" is due to his
managerial ability and how much is due to having a virtual monopoly on
something that is absolutely necessary to run a business?
It's true, Microsoft makes a lot of money. But is that because the company has
a virtual monopoly on something every business needs? If someone had a
monopoly on water, he could be richer than Gates and Ballmer put together.
Anyhow, you didn't answer the question. I've never heard Bill Gates or
Steve Ballmer say anything that indicates that they know about technology or
are interested in technology. I'm not saying they know nothing, I'm just
saying that, after all these years, there should be some evidence of their
involvement. If you can give me examples, I would be very interested.
"And now Google and MS don't even want of them anymore."
With Google, it was an understandable problem. But perhaps Microsoft
is just playing games.
For me, the underlying issue is this: Have Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates
ever made any statements that indicate that they have an understanding of
technology? The book The Road Ahead was surprisingly empty of information, and
Bill Gates had co-writers for that book.
An answer to that question would help answer another fundamental
question: Is Steve Ballmer qualified to buy Yahoo and improve the company?
Yahoo paid Terry Semel $528 million for working 6 years, then fired him
because he didn't know anything about technology, and other reasons. Would
Yahoo going to Microsoft just be another case of billionaires trying to do
something about which they know little, and care less?
MOD PARENT UP! It's infantile to believe that the U.S. government can spend money on people. The U.S. government HAS NO MONEY, it is DEEPLY in debt. The U.S. government has no money.
It amazes me how little most U.S. citizens know about their government, and how little they care. It appears to me that the U.S. government is corrupt in may ways, not just in starting a war to help make weapons and oil investors rich, and to act out anger. Read House of Bush, House of Saud. Bush and his friends and associates sell U.S. government power to those who pay the most. Saudis have paid them 1.4 Billion dollars, so the Saudis got EXACTLY what they
wanted: Higher oil prices, the U.S. taxpayer paid for defending Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein, and a weaker United States.
Politics is certainly not a primary interest of mine, but I educate myself about what's happening. Here's just ONE area of corruption, the unprecedented, organized vote fraud:
Neither of those articles discuss how votes are stolen using computer
fraud. Slashdot has run 17 stories in 2007 and 2008 about computer vote fraud and
electronic voting, listed here in reverse order by date. Note that the evidence is that the last two presidential elections were stolen:
It amazes me how little most U.S. citizens know about their government, and how little they care. Politics is certainly not a primary interest of mine, but I educate myself about what's happening.
Neither of those articles discuss how votes are stolen using computer
fraud. Slashdot has run 17 stories in 2007 and 2008 about computer vote fraud and
electronic voting, listed here in reverse order by date:
Someone disagrees with you, and you engage in a personal attack? It's
a fact, you are justifying a system in which a manufacturer can keep fraud
secret.
You said "... hundreds of drugs are approved every year and only a
handful turn out to have unknown risks..." [my emphasis]
The February 2008 article in the highly respected journal Nature, 2007 FDA drug approvals: a year of flux says, "The US
FDA approved 17 new molecular entities (NMEs) and 2 biologic license
applications (BLAs) in 2007, the lowest number recorded since 1983." That
article includes a chart showing drug approvals for every year since 1996.
An August 23, 2008 article in the Wall Street
Journal, Sick Patients Need Cutting-Edge Drugs says "The FDA
approved just 16 new drugs last year, and is on pace to approve only 18 this
year. That's down from a high of 53 in 1996 and 39 in 1997." That article
says more drugs should be approved. But that is the position of a very
ignorant person, who doesn't understand the widespread sloppiness of drug
development.
The November 23, 2006 NEJM article, Observational Studies of Drug Safety - Aprotinin and the Absence of
Transparency says, "The full safety profile of a new drug is rarely
known at the time of approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Most
drug-development programs designed for treatments of symptomatic indications
are underpowered to detect any increased risk of rare drug reactions or change
in background event rates attributable to the drug. Large, post-marketing,
randomized, controlled trials provide robust data on drug safety but may be
subject to multiple sources of bias."
Again, "The full safety profile of a new drug is rarely known at
the time of approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)", and only
16 drugs were approved in 2007. [my emphasis]
The evidence shows that the FDA is correct when it doesn't approve
many drugs. The vast majority of clinical trials, experiments on people, show
no benefit whatsoever. That's because new drugs are usually proposed based on wild guessing, not because of truly scientific investigation.
A large percentage of people in the U.S. are drug enthusiasts. They shouldn't be. Drugs, even ones that are considered beneficial by everyone, usually have negative side-effects.
You said, "... you have no way to verify that his claims are valid."
Both before and after, I watched him play the game. I was staying at his house in Turin, Italy. I watched everything he did, and his score tripled in two weeks, after he hassled himself because I got a higher score than he did. He said he was old. I just had more practice. After two weeks, his score was higher than mine.
You are just guessing, I think. You didn't read any of the scientific papers. It is far, far worse than you seem to think.
You said, "I don't think researchers should be held responsible for decisions they can't control that they're effectively being blackmailed to hush-up..."
If there is a conspiracy to defraud customers, that is understandable and acceptable for some of the conspirators?
"Obviously old people can learn things but in most instances their brains aren't as good just like the rest of their bodies."
It isn't obvious, and it doesn't always happen. Some people's lives degrade far, far more than others. The theories MUST take the recognized facts into account.
Slashdot Mirror
"But, it's not ads per se that are so evil. If ads are done right, they aren't annoying."
"As soon as Google releases an add on platform..."
They haven't done that yet. If they do, it is anyone's guess whether Firefox add-ons will be supported, or whether the hard-working AdBlock Plus and NoScript teams will want to develop and maintain a new platform.
There is a huge problem here: Making money through advertising makes it necessary that people see the ads. Google has been spending $50,000,000 per year on Firefox. After Chrome is fully developed, Chrome will likely become the new favorite, replacing the buggy, CPU hogging, badly managed Firefox. Then Google can stop spending that money on Firefox.
This may be several years away, but it is a conflict that is certainly there.
My understanding is that the sole developer of Proxomitron died several years ago, and that it is no longer being maintained. Is that true?
But it is all somewhat meaningless, whether Chrome passes ACID3 or not, since Chrome is meant to support a company that sells advertising.
I'm guessing that Chrome will never have AdBlock Plus and NoScript.
It's all about control. Firefox allows you to control what you read. Many advertising companies try to change readers into time-wasting, ad-reading, money-wasting robots.
Those who don't like being the target of aggressive behavior and want control over their lives will need to continue to use Firefox, no matter how technically superior Chrome is.
I did that. That's how I learned about the web site that has numerous free books.
Wow. That link is to a book from a good web site: Free eBooks.
Other free books about C and C++: Free C and C++ books
When the grandparent post said, "... most people using IE are changing the user-agent to read ... Mozilla/Firefox ...", he was JOKING.
No, not a fork. Microsoft bought a very limited version of Diskeeper for use with its products.
Agreed. My experience is that JkDefrag is FAR better than the very quirky and badly named Diskeeper. Quote from the first page:
"JkDefrag is a disk defragmenter and optimizer for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/2008/X64. Completely automatic and very easy to use, fast, low overhead, with several optimization strategies, and can handle floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows. Included are a Windows version, a commandline version (for scheduling by the task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts), a screensaver version, a DLL library (for use from programming languages), versions for Windows X64, and the complete sources."
Diskeeper? Is that Dis keeper, a keeper of disrespect? Or Disk eeper, something that causes a fear of disks? Shouldn't there be another K?
If you want to be abused by a defragmentation program, you will have to pay dearly. Sorry, no abuse with the free and open source JkDefrag; remember the old saying, "You get what you pay for."
My understanding is that Microsoft Windows is allowed to have so many vulnerabilities because vulnerabilities make Microsoft more money. See the July 17, 2005 New York Times article, Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster.
Windows allows several degradation paths, all of which make more money for Microsoft. People who don't know how to maintain Windows, a very difficult and very technical task, buy new computers and in doing that pay for another copy of another vulnerable version of Windows. Here are a few of the paths of degradation:
Sun has always been TERRIBLE at marketing.
Also, the process generates Carbon Dioxide.
You said, "There are interviews, articles, various live events, etc. etc. that show Gates and Ballmer can quite capably talk about technology."
Over the years I've seen a lot by and about Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, but what has surprised me is how little technical understanding they demonstrate.
Microsoft ignored the internet until it became a big thing, then every Microsoft web page said "internet" even when it wasn't appropriate.
Microsoft bought Hotmail. (A woman friend of mine deleted all messages from Hotmail, because she thought they were porn. LOL)
Microsoft did not have a search engine until it became a big thing, then Microsoft could not compete with Google.
Would a technically knowledgeable person have released Windows Vista?
Why is this relevant now? Because I don't see how Microsoft buying Yahoo's failed search service will help Microsoft's failed search service. And I interpret Steve Ballmer saying he isn't interested as possibly just bargaining for a lower price.
"Gates... got his start writing compilers."
Gates wrote a Basic interpreter. Did you ever write a program for it? I did. It was quirky and limited and poorly documented. Writing an interpreter certainly qualifies someone as interested in technology. But the idealism that is required to be influential in thinking about technology was, and is, lacking.
Microsoft bought DOS for about $80,000. About 10 man-years of programming effort were put into DOS. (Volunteers made the FreeDOS work-alike.) That made Microsoft $40 billion dollars, and gave the company the money to hire people who knew how to write Windows. It seems to me that the unusual circumstance of being able to take something worth about $1,000,000 and turn it into $40 billion is what made Microsoft successful, not unusual technical insight.
How much of "Microsoft doing really well under Ballmer" is due to his managerial ability and how much is due to having a virtual monopoly on something that is absolutely necessary to run a business?
It's true, Microsoft makes a lot of money. But is that because the company has a virtual monopoly on something every business needs? If someone had a monopoly on water, he could be richer than Gates and Ballmer put together.
Anyhow, you didn't answer the question. I've never heard Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer say anything that indicates that they know about technology or are interested in technology. I'm not saying they know nothing, I'm just saying that, after all these years, there should be some evidence of their involvement. If you can give me examples, I would be very interested.
"And now Google and MS don't even want of them anymore."
With Google, it was an understandable problem. But perhaps Microsoft is just playing games.
For me, the underlying issue is this: Have Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates ever made any statements that indicate that they have an understanding of technology? The book The Road Ahead was surprisingly empty of information, and Bill Gates had co-writers for that book.
An answer to that question would help answer another fundamental question: Is Steve Ballmer qualified to buy Yahoo and improve the company? Yahoo paid Terry Semel $528 million for working 6 years, then fired him because he didn't know anything about technology, and other reasons. Would Yahoo going to Microsoft just be another case of billionaires trying to do something about which they know little, and care less?
You said, "The US government is in debt, but that's not a big problem..."
A lot of people think the unprecedented debt is a huge problem. The debt makes the price of everything go up, stealing wealth from the average person.
MOD PARENT UP! It's infantile to believe that the U.S. government can spend money on people. The U.S. government HAS NO MONEY, it is DEEPLY in debt. The U.S. government has no money.
It amazes me how little most U.S. citizens know about their government, and how little they care. It appears to me that the U.S. government is corrupt in may ways, not just in starting a war to help make weapons and oil investors rich, and to act out anger. Read House of Bush, House of Saud. Bush and his friends and associates sell U.S. government power to those who pay the most. Saudis have paid them 1.4 Billion dollars, so the Saudis got EXACTLY what they wanted: Higher oil prices, the U.S. taxpayer paid for defending Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein, and a weaker United States.
Politics is certainly not a primary interest of mine, but I educate myself about what's happening. Here's just ONE area of corruption, the unprecedented, organized vote fraud:
Rolling Stone magazine has an article about vote stealing in 2008: Block the Vote: Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president? That article is also available as a PDF file.
The Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law has another article: Voter Suppression Incidents 2008. A PDF is available.
Neither of those articles discuss how votes are stolen using computer fraud. Slashdot has run 17 stories in 2007 and 2008 about computer vote fraud and electronic voting, listed here in reverse order by date. Note that the evidence is that the last two presidential elections were stolen:
West Virginia Voters Say Machines Are Switching Votes.
Black Box Voting 2008 Election Protection Toolkit
How To Spot E-Vote Tampering?
Hard Evidence of Voting Machine Addition Errors
New Jersey E-Voting Problems Worse Than Originally Suspected
The Cost of Electronic Voting
Sequoia Vote Machine Can't Do Simple Arithmetic?
Ohio Investigating Possible Vote Machine Tampering Last Year
Diebold Voter Fraud Rumors in New Hampshire Primaries
Ohio's Alternative to Diebold Machines May Be Equally Bad
All Fifty States May Face Voting Machine Lawsuit
Judge Voids Un-Auditable California Election
Re-Vote Likely After E-Vote Data Mishandling
A Flawed US Election Reform Bill
House To Vote On Paper Trail and OSS Voting Bill
U.S. To Certify Labs
It amazes me how little most U.S. citizens know about their government, and how little they care. Politics is certainly not a primary interest of mine, but I educate myself about what's happening.
Rolling Stone magazine has an article about vote stealing in 2008: Block the Vote: Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president? That article is also available as a PDF file.
The Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law has another article: Voter Suppression Incidents 2008. A PDF is available.
Neither of those articles discuss how votes are stolen using computer fraud. Slashdot has run 17 stories in 2007 and 2008 about computer vote fraud and electronic voting, listed here in reverse order by date:
West Virginia Voters Say Machines Are Switching Votes.
Black Box Voting 2008 Election Protection Toolkit
How To Spot E-Vote Tampering?
Hard Evidence of Voting Machine Addition Errors
New Jersey E-Voting Problems Worse Than Originally Suspected
The Cost of Electronic Voting
Sequoia Vote Machine Can't Do Simple Arithmetic?
Ohio Investigating Possible Vote Machine Tampering Last Year
Diebold Voter Fraud Rumors in New Hampshire Primaries
Ohio's Alternative to Diebold Machines May Be Equally Bad
All Fifty States May Face Voting Machine Lawsuit
Judge Voids Un-Auditable California Election
Re-Vote Likely After E-Vote Data Mishandling
A Flawed US Election Reform Bill
House To Vote On Paper Trail and OSS Voting Bill
U.S. To Certify Labs For Testing E-Voting Machines
U.S. Bars Lab From Testing E-Voting Machines
You said, "... you're a drooling ideologue..."
Someone disagrees with you, and you engage in a personal attack? It's a fact, you are justifying a system in which a manufacturer can keep fraud secret.
You said "... hundreds of drugs are approved every year and only a handful turn out to have unknown risks..." [my emphasis]
The February 2008 article in the highly respected journal Nature, 2007 FDA drug approvals: a year of flux says, "The US FDA approved 17 new molecular entities (NMEs) and 2 biologic license applications (BLAs) in 2007, the lowest number recorded since 1983." That article includes a chart showing drug approvals for every year since 1996.
An August 23, 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal, Sick Patients Need Cutting-Edge Drugs says "The FDA approved just 16 new drugs last year, and is on pace to approve only 18 this year. That's down from a high of 53 in 1996 and 39 in 1997." That article says more drugs should be approved. But that is the position of a very ignorant person, who doesn't understand the widespread sloppiness of drug development.
Read the November 23, 2006 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, to which I linked above, Dangerous Deception - Hiding the Evidence of Adverse Drug Effects. That and many, many other articles show that drug fraud is common.
The November 23, 2006 NEJM article, Observational Studies of Drug Safety - Aprotinin and the Absence of Transparency says, "The full safety profile of a new drug is rarely known at the time of approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Most drug-development programs designed for treatments of symptomatic indications are underpowered to detect any increased risk of rare drug reactions or change in background event rates attributable to the drug. Large, post-marketing, randomized, controlled trials provide robust data on drug safety but may be subject to multiple sources of bias."
Again, "The full safety profile of a new drug is rarely known at the time of approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)", and only 16 drugs were approved in 2007. [my emphasis]
The evidence shows that the FDA is correct when it doesn't approve many drugs. The vast majority of clinical trials, experiments on people, show no benefit whatsoever. That's because new drugs are usually proposed based on wild guessing, not because of truly scientific investigation.
A large percentage of people in the U.S. are drug enthusiasts. They shouldn't be. Drugs, even ones that are considered beneficial by everyone, usually have negative side-effects.
You said, "... you have no way to verify that his claims are valid."
Both before and after, I watched him play the game. I was staying at his house in Turin, Italy. I watched everything he did, and his score tripled in two weeks, after he hassled himself because I got a higher score than he did. He said he was old. I just had more practice. After two weeks, his score was higher than mine.
You are just guessing, I think. You didn't read any of the scientific papers. It is far, far worse than you seem to think.
You said, "I don't think researchers should be held responsible for decisions they can't control that they're effectively being blackmailed to hush-up..."
If there is a conspiracy to defraud customers, that is understandable and acceptable for some of the conspirators?
"Obviously old people can learn things but in most instances their brains aren't as good just like the rest of their bodies."
It isn't obvious, and it doesn't always happen. Some people's lives degrade far, far more than others. The theories MUST take the recognized facts into account.
"That isn't incompetence or fraud on the part of the researchers..."
Are you saying that the researchers knowingly participated in management problems, but they should not be held responsible?
"Only a few..." should have been "Only a small percentage..."
I'm very busy today, and not spending enough time reading what I typed.