Mozilla has explored the possibility of adopting a multiprocessing approach for Firefox in the past, but the idea didn't gain serious traction in the Firefox developer community until it was implemented by Google and Microsoft in their respective web browsers.
It was probably too large a project to consider doing without a pressing need. Chrome and IE8 supplied that pressure.
I may be a blowhard, but I'm not a hypocrite. "Free" will be free. Ebooks free for first week, web book (Google Books) free for first month, abridged audiobook free to all hardcover purchasers and unabridged audiobook (the whole thing) free to everyone forever. All starting on pub date (July 9th).
BTW, I made those audiobooks free by reserving the rights to myself. I paid for the studio time (and recorded it myself), the abridging and the audio editing (more than $25,000, all told), so that the audiobook could be free to all.
Philadelphia has over 400 murders a year, and has for the past couple years. My father is a doctor, and apparently Scandanavian doctors come to Philadelphia with the express purpose of studying gunshot wounds, since there are several per day in Philly.
If you were driving through North Philly or parts of West Philly, your friend very well may have been right that you were driving through a 'war zone.'
Indeed, performance is the top priority for Firefox.next (presumably Fx3.6 although you never know). Codenamed 'Namoroka,' the developers have selected several common tasks which they want to perceptibly increase the speed of, including:
Startup
Opening a new tab
Loading a bookmarked page
Autocompleting a location in the Awesomebar
Play rich media content
Animation and other interaction techniques to reduce lag between action and feedback, and to improve perceived speed
It's unlikely that this was the work of a 'rogue engineer.' Palm's Pre team is run by a former Apple VP who hired away Apple iPod team employees to join his new Palm Pre team. There's almost no chance that this wasn't intentional and by design, using inside information that the former Apple employees had. Apple, being famously litigious, will almost certainly try to build a case. On what basis is unclear—perhaps non-compete violations, perhaps trade secrets.
Right on. It seems that this author is profoundly unfamiliar with his own heritage, and so is grasping out for the label 'socialism,' even though it doesn't make much sense. Tocqueville investigated what he found to be the peculiarly American tendency toward association.
Better use has been made of association and this powerful instrument of action has been applied to more varied aims in America than anywhere else in the world. Apart from permanent associations such as townships, cities, and counties created by law, there are a quantity of others whose existence and growth are solely due to the initiative of individuals. [emphasis mine]
The free institutions of the United States and the political rights enjoyed there provide a thousand continual reminders to every citizen that he lives in society. At every moment they bring his mind back to this idea, that it is the duty as well as the interest of men to be useful to their fellows. Having no particular reason to have others, since he is neither their slave nor their master, the American's heart easily inclines toward benevolence. At first it is of necessity that men attend to the public interest, afterward by choice.
Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types—religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute... In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association.
One could go on pulling relevant quotes from Democracy in America on associations and civil society, but it's apparent that the author of the Wired article has either 1) never read any literature on civil society, or 2) has an agenda to push regardless.
Until the Firehose is no longer a UI abortion, I will abstain from moderating potential stories, and will instead gripe about the stories in the comments like we always do anyway.
If you were a regular reader of Slashdot, you might have recalled this story from ten days ago: New Firefox Project Could Mean Multi-Processor Support. The project is splitting Firefox into several processes running at once, using bits of the IPC protocols that Chrome developed, such that the UI, javascript, and other parts of Firefox can run independently on each other.
There's a reason our screens are wider than they are tall, though: we need horizontal space more, because we read from side to side. This means things with text in them generally need to be (much) wider than they are tall.
Actually, you're just about 100% wrong on that point. Studies on human reading have demonstrated that it is much easier on the reader's eyes if text width is thinner rather than wider:
NPR could be hurt if the government cut off all their funds.
Well, there's the key difference between NPR and a paper like The Guardian. NPR has never turned a profit, and has never bothered to develop a profit model. It has remained on the public dole by design. The Guardian, a paper that is further to the left than NPR, nevertheless manages to turn in a healthy profit. It may not be Fox News, but it does quite well for itself.
Saying that capitalism will save the day overly simplistic.
The irony of The Guardian advocating a profit-driven, competitive, capitalist solution to the current woes of the news industry can't have gone unnoticed to you.
They were complaining that too many useless agents had been recruited in places like the State Department, and not enough in atomic and other defense programs.
Funny that they had the same esteem for the State Department that President Nixon would later have.
Dissatisfied as the Soviets were with the number of assets inside the nuclear and defense programs, they had more than enough inside both the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos to steal the U.S. designs for nuclear weapons. Both of these projects were subject to our highest standards of security, but that didn't seem to make much difference.
The Venona project, only declassified toward the end of the Cold War, contains a large amount of information vindicating the position that the U.S. government was indeed riddled with Soviet assets. McCarthy didn't have access to Venona, and in all probability his lists of communists working in the government were a wild goose chase. It's unfortunate that his tactics and fervor discredited his larger objective, however, because it turns out that there were quite a number of spies in the U.S. government and other key institutions of American society.
The link you provided does show IE losing between 7% and 12% per year, rather than Asa's rough figure of 10% per year.
I agree with your assessment that there is an artificial barrier to Firefox adoption, that in the current environment there is a "natural rate" of IE use. However, as Firefox and other standards-compliant browsers make significant gains in marketshare, several knock-on effects will manifest:
New businesses or transitional businesses will have the opportunity to establish non-IE standards for their policies. Back when IE was overwhelmingly hegemonic, it wasn't viable to suggest standardizing on a <5% browser. Now that there are browsers with 20% (Fx) and ~10% (Safari), and Chrome which is backed by a multibillion dollar corporation, standardizing on something other than IE is far more defensible.
Absolute marketshare dominance is not necessarily what Firefox or any other standards compliant browser is aiming for, at least in the medium-term. It doesn't matter terribly if there is an artificial floor on how far IE can fall, given institutional path dependency. What matters is that the browser market can achieve a more plural distribution of marketshares. This will have two effects: first, raising the importance of adhering to web standards; and second, raising the importance of competitive innovation by browser vendors.
In general, I agree with your suspicion that simply extrapolating from raw trends four or five years into the future is not a particularly valid or predictive exercise, because as you rightly point out the sociology of different blocks of users and their needs are different. Firefox may effectively eat up certain blocks, but that's no guarantee that they can effectively appeal to others.
I hope Google is not discussing Google Squared as part of a (typically Microsoft) strategy of announcing a competitive to-be-released-soon! service simply to deter users from switching to a rival with an actual shipping product.
Already exists. The interface isn't as slick as you would like, but you can definitely go into the history and see the diff between the current article and the article from 3 days / 7 days / 1 month ago.
Already exists. The interface isn't as slick as you would like, but you can definitely go into the history and see the diff between the current article and the article from 3 days / 7 days / 1 month ago.
I agree, it's nowhere close to a current gen console. But it can certainly handle games designed for the iPhone/iPod Touch. All you would need is a Wii-like motion-sensing controller. Or maybe you could just use your iPhone as the controller via Bluetooth.
Slashdot Mirror
According to the Ars coverage:
It was probably too large a project to consider doing without a pressing need. Chrome and IE8 supplied that pressure.
Don't make those SR-71 pilots too cocky or they'll rub it in to the other airplane pilots.
Philadelphia has over 400 murders a year, and has for the past couple years. My father is a doctor, and apparently Scandanavian doctors come to Philadelphia with the express purpose of studying gunshot wounds, since there are several per day in Philly.
If you were driving through North Philly or parts of West Philly, your friend very well may have been right that you were driving through a 'war zone.'
He's got 95 Theses but a bitch ain't one.
Chris Messina did the same thing in a 50+ minute rant about Mozilla and RIA technologies two years ago. Why do people pay attention to him?
Indeed, performance is the top priority for Firefox.next (presumably Fx3.6 although you never know). Codenamed 'Namoroka,' the developers have selected several common tasks which they want to perceptibly increase the speed of, including:
It's unlikely that this was the work of a 'rogue engineer.' Palm's Pre team is run by a former Apple VP who hired away Apple iPod team employees to join his new Palm Pre team. There's almost no chance that this wasn't intentional and by design, using inside information that the former Apple employees had. Apple, being famously litigious, will almost certainly try to build a case. On what basis is unclear—perhaps non-compete violations, perhaps trade secrets.
Here's John Gruber's take on the Pre's MediaSync.
Yeah, that's called the 'Candlejack bug,' and it seems to be caus
Right on. It seems that this author is profoundly unfamiliar with his own heritage, and so is grasping out for the label 'socialism,' even though it doesn't make much sense. Tocqueville investigated what he found to be the peculiarly American tendency toward association.
One could go on pulling relevant quotes from Democracy in America on associations and civil society, but it's apparent that the author of the Wired article has either 1) never read any literature on civil society, or 2) has an agenda to push regardless.
And nothing of value was lost...
Until the Firehose is no longer a UI abortion, I will abstain from moderating potential stories, and will instead gripe about the stories in the comments like we always do anyway.
If you were a regular reader of Slashdot, you might have recalled this story from ten days ago: New Firefox Project Could Mean Multi-Processor Support. The project is splitting Firefox into several processes running at once, using bits of the IPC protocols that Chrome developed, such that the UI, javascript, and other parts of Firefox can run independently on each other.
I think Bill Gates recently stated that "ten tabs ought to be enough for anybody." Great minds think alike, no?
Actually, you're just about 100% wrong on that point. Studies on human reading have demonstrated that it is much easier on the reader's eyes if text width is thinner rather than wider:
On the web, vertical space is used for skimming text and scrolling content, and is hence much more important.
Well, there's the key difference between NPR and a paper like The Guardian. NPR has never turned a profit, and has never bothered to develop a profit model. It has remained on the public dole by design. The Guardian, a paper that is further to the left than NPR, nevertheless manages to turn in a healthy profit. It may not be Fox News, but it does quite well for itself.
The irony of The Guardian advocating a profit-driven, competitive, capitalist solution to the current woes of the news industry can't have gone unnoticed to you.
Funny that they had the same esteem for the State Department that President Nixon would later have.
Dissatisfied as the Soviets were with the number of assets inside the nuclear and defense programs, they had more than enough inside both the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos to steal the U.S. designs for nuclear weapons. Both of these projects were subject to our highest standards of security, but that didn't seem to make much difference.
The Venona project, only declassified toward the end of the Cold War, contains a large amount of information vindicating the position that the U.S. government was indeed riddled with Soviet assets. McCarthy didn't have access to Venona, and in all probability his lists of communists working in the government were a wild goose chase. It's unfortunate that his tactics and fervor discredited his larger objective, however, because it turns out that there were quite a number of spies in the U.S. government and other key institutions of American society.
Obama administration take on Apple? Not with Al Gore sitting on Apple's board.
The link you provided does show IE losing between 7% and 12% per year, rather than Asa's rough figure of 10% per year.
I agree with your assessment that there is an artificial barrier to Firefox adoption, that in the current environment there is a "natural rate" of IE use. However, as Firefox and other standards-compliant browsers make significant gains in marketshare, several knock-on effects will manifest:
In general, I agree with your suspicion that simply extrapolating from raw trends four or five years into the future is not a particularly valid or predictive exercise, because as you rightly point out the sociology of different blocks of users and their needs are different. Firefox may effectively eat up certain blocks, but that's no guarantee that they can effectively appeal to others.
I hope Google is not discussing Google Squared as part of a (typically Microsoft) strategy of announcing a competitive to-be-released-soon! service simply to deter users from switching to a rival with an actual shipping product.
Because over-leveraging speculative investments is exactly what caused our current global financial meltdown, the worst since the Great Depression?
Already exists. The interface isn't as slick as you would like, but you can definitely go into the history and see the diff between the current article and the article from 3 days / 7 days / 1 month ago.
To do this:
1) Go to a random wikipedia article.
2) Click on the history tab at the top.
3) Select the radio button for a revision from a month ago, and click "Compare selected versions"
Voila!
Already exists. The interface isn't as slick as you would like, but you can definitely go into the history and see the diff between the current article and the article from 3 days / 7 days / 1 month ago.
To do this:
1) Go to a random wikipedia article.
2) Click on the history tab at the top.
3) Select the radio button for a revision from a month ago, and click "Compare selected versions"
Voila!
I agree, it's nowhere close to a current gen console. But it can certainly handle games designed for the iPhone/iPod Touch. All you would need is a Wii-like motion-sensing controller. Or maybe you could just use your iPhone as the controller via Bluetooth.