Sounds stupid to me. First, such an organization would clearly be in the pockets of IBM, Sun, and the Linux vendors you talk of. How would that organization have any credibility? What, anything that helps IBM, Sun and Linux and/or hurts Microsoft and Novell is automatically approved by this organization, and anything that does the opposite is rejected? That's supposed to be credible? Please...
Slashdotters seem to forget that the overwhelming majority of countries approved OOXML, and don't feel there was anything wrong about that result. IBM didn't get their way for once, so what? Fine let IBM form their own organization and let Brazil and South Africa put more credence into IBM's puppet organization than the ISO while the rest of the world laughs.
However, Microsoft doesn't seem to understand that just because google's browser is worse, that doesn't mean IE8 is okay.
Since IE8's "suggested site" feature is opt-in, I don't know how anyone but the most dedicated Microsoft hater and/or Google apologist could say that it's not "okay".
In other words, no matter what Microsoft says or does, you'll condemn them, so what's the point? You've made up your mind to condemn Microsoft regardless while giving Google a pass for much worse.
You're logic is astonishing. Microsoft's Suggested Sites feature is much less intrusive than Google's yet you condemn Microsoft because they might become more intrusive in the future? Meanwhile you give Google a pass for being more intrusive than Microsoft in the present? Are you for real?
"it's not antitrust to not sell a competitor's products."
You're wrong here. Antitrust is whatever a judge says it is. Antitrust has no strict rules regarding what's kosher and what isn't. Hell, in the EU, antitrust is whatever the EC says it is, and they don't even provide due process when reaching their decisions (i.e. the accused has no right to face or cross-examine their accusers, secret evidence can be used against the accused, etc..).
Here's what's going to happen. It'll happen because it always happens.
Apple gets caught with its pants down. Everyone condemns Apple while its PR teams huddle together to find a way to deal with the issue. Finally, Apple announces that the issue was to do with an oversight caused by a miscommunication caused by an unrelated issue that actually was a case of the application not being approved yet, not that it was really rejected.
People outside of Apple circles will laugh, but then be flamed endlessly for laughing to the point that we no longer want to talk about it any more.
Google gets the very same treatment around here. For example, Google released the most draconian EULA ever with Chrome ("We own any and every thing that passes through the browser!"), people went ape shit (though the more extreme Google fanboys actually defended the EULA), Google reversed itself claiming that the EULA was due to some clerical error, now all is forgiven (at least by Google fanboys and most slashdotters).
Apple and Google get away with things like this over and over and over around these parts.
I don't think Microsoft signs others' drivers, they leave it to Verisign and the like. Anyway, the digital sig doesn't mean the driver is bug free, it merely means it came from a reputable source. Maybe Apple is no longer worthy of that title. Zdnet had a series of articles on this yesterday, where Apple is installing the MobileMe service when you install iTunes8, for God's sake. They install a bunch of other useless crap too, that bogs down the system.
I find Chrome to be the fastest browser I've ever used. But maybe it's because the laptop I use it on has 4 gigs of RAM; maybe it's geared toward lots of RAM.
I enjoy using it, but I've gradually gone back to Firefox/IE (which I use interchangeably). One reason is that Chrome's plugin support sucks (Flash applets are herky-jerky and Flash videos stop playing after a few seconds even though the Flash video continues to successfully load; Silverlight applets are quite literally orders of magnitude slower than on IE and Firefox; Photosynth plugin doesn't work; WMP plugin is slow but usable).
"However, 1) tabs running in separate threads shouldn't bring down the entire browser, if the application was properly designed in the first place;"
The main difference between threads and processes as far as robustness is concerned is that threads share one address space while each process has its own address space.
So consider the scenario where a tab's web page contains a Flash thingy, and a bug in the Flash plugin causes Flash to inappropriately write all over the browser's memory? How do you *design* against that? At least by using processes rather than threads, Flash is only corrupting the memory of the particular process that's hosting the tab rather than the memory of the browser in general, as would be the case with threads.
"2) I'm sure we'll still find plenty of ways to crash the primary process and/or cause even separately running processes to do this."
You're right here. There's already a well known bug in chrome that brings down the parent process and therefore all tabs. (It involves typing "evil:%" in the address bar or some such.) But the idea is that the parent process would have much less code than the child processes, and would be easier to be debug free (and it wouldn't host binary plugins by 3rd parties over whose quality control the browser devs have zero control).
"BTW, not only did Google copy MS by removing the menu bar, they also copied Microsoft by adding to the right of the tabs, a Tools dropdown menu, a Page dropdown menu, and a "New Tab" button. Why have slashdotters not condemned Google for copying?"
I just noticed that Chrome copies IE8's feature of highlighting the domain portion of the URL in the address bar too!;)
It's my understanding that Chrome's one process per tab functionality depends on Windows' ability to have windows from multiple processes exist within the same window hierarchy, an ability that neither OS X nor Linux has. I don't expect Mac or Linux versions of Chrome any time soon (unless they remove the one process per tab feature for those platforms).
You're almost right. IE8 does use a separate thread (rather than separate process per tab), but still, a crashed thread won't take down the whole process, only that tab (they probably have exception handlers catch the crash for each thread and so can recover gracefully).
So what? Face facts: Flash is a monopoly in this market, and a competitor can't compete simply by being better (which Silverlight *is*, BTW). You, as a likely Windows hater that's pissed that supposedly better alternatives find it difficult to compete due to the inertia of Windows' entrechment, should understand that. So if some moolah helps grease the wheels, so what? Business if business. I didn't hear you complain that Google paid Dell to bundle Google Desktop on all of their PCs, did I?
H.264 requires twice as much CPU power to decode, and Flash doesn't support adaptive streaming like Silverlight does.
Not that it matters in this case, because the video is being fed via Move Network's video player, while Silverlight is handling the UI and overlays (so it's not like nbcolympics.com where Silverlight handled both the video and the UI of the video player).
That's funny, given that 99% of slashdotters literally worship one or more of RMS, Linus, or Steve Jobs.
BTW, Microsoft was the first to come up with many things. They were the first to factor their browser into a component that 3rd parties could use. They were the first to come up with OLE functionality. They were the first to have fast user switching. MS Office includes many firsts (pivot tables, irregular tables, on-the-fly spell and grammar checking, tabbed spreadsheets, modern UI, etc). Photosynth hasn't been done by anyone else (and no, QTVR isn't anything like Photosynth).
And other things that they may not have been the first, but took to the next level and/or delivered to the masses (e.g. Xbox Live, optical mice, ergonomic keyboards, fingerprint readers, Silverlight, Surface, programmable apps).
That's just a small sample. I remember a story some months ago that analized the patents awarded for each year since 2001 or whatever. The study showed that Microsoft was only second to IBM in number of patents, and that Microsoft's patents were of higher quality than anyone else's.
Actually, a whole LOT of people have left Google for Microsoft. It's not widely known because Microsoft doesn't make a big deal about it (unlike Google, who feels a need to make a big press statement when they hire from a competitor).
This anti-tech/pro-tech chart is stupid and arbitrary.
According to the cnet's chart, anyone that's against piracy is anti-tech? Anyone that's for anti-porn filters in shcools is anti-tech? Complete bullshit. I'm sure almost everyone that voted for DCMA and internet filters consider themselves pro-tech, and have reasonable arguments despite being in disagreement with slashdot doctrine.
Same goes for most of the other bills that cnet arbitrarily decided would represent "tech" and arbitrarily decided whether yes or no on each issue was pro or anti tech.
So, a binary plugin should never be able to use unique features of the underlying OS? Please...
Anyway, Mac zealots would still be whining even if Microsoft had made Photosynth a standalone app, just as they did with World Wide Telescope.
According to these Mac zealots, it's wrong for Microsoft to make *any* Windows-specific software (standalone or browser plugins), but it's just fine and dandy for Apple to make Mac-only software, and such Mac-only software (like iLife) is even used as ammo for "Mac Rules, Windows Sucks!" declarations. (Well, turnabout is fair play, maybe Windows zealots can use Photosynth and World Wide Telescope as ammo for "Windows rules, Mac sucks!" nonsense.)
"Apple now, like MS, treats users as a means to generate a long term profit stream, not like a customer who paid a huge amount of money for a machine and expects to be treated as a customer."
What do you mean, Apple is "now" acting this way? Apple's always been like this. This is the company that for years actually charged users for the ability to watch videos at full screen with QuickTime player. Apple's never been an altruistic saint by any stretch of the imagination.
I laugh that you actually say that with a sense of pride. I look at your statement as one more example of how out of touch typical slashdotters are.
Over a billion people (normal people) watched Usain Bolt run 100 meters at a blistering 9.69 seconds, and were thrilled at the spectacle. But the typical slashdotter cares more about recompiling his kernel.
While you're at it, why not divide a nation's medal "points" by the nation's population, to really make things fair. Points per capita.
But I got a better idea - how about no point system at all? Which is what they have now. This isn't like a high school or college track meet where points are totaled to determine which side won the meet. It looks like China will win the most gold medals and most medals over all, but there won't be any official statement that "China won the Olympics". The medal count has no formal place in the rules, nor should it. It's just an informal stat that may or may not be interesting for fans to talk about. Bringing in a complicated system to formalize the medal count (or medal "points") into something that's officially meaningful would be pretty lame.
"You're a Slashdotter. Are you spouting ignorance regarding OOXML? Or are you spouting lies regarding OOXML? Those are the only two choices right?"
As a matter of fact, no, those aren't the only two choices. Let me spell it out for you: In the sentence "Slashdotters continue to spout either ignorance or lies regarding OOXML", "Slashdotters" does not mean "All slashdotters", it means "Slashdotters, in general". Anyone with a gradeschool level reading comprehension would understand that (it's very sad that that doesn't include you).
It is not about "We head Microsoft", it is about the fact that something like WordWrapLikeWord95 should not exist in an ISO standard.
Slashdotters are so ignorant on OOXML yet speak so authoritatively on the subject.
WordWrapLikeWord95 isn't in the ISO standard as an opaque concept like it was in the ECMA standard. WordWrapLikeWord95, et al, are fully detailed in the ISO standard as to exactly what you'd need to do to implement them, should you wish to do so. (Those settings have also been deprecated, only for use when reading the small percentage of old documents that originally used those settings; new documents should not use them, period.) http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2008/01/18/suppresstopspacingwp-compat-settings-1.aspx
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds stupid to me.
First, such an organization would clearly be in the pockets of IBM, Sun, and the Linux vendors you talk of. How would that organization have any credibility? What, anything that helps IBM, Sun and Linux and/or hurts Microsoft and Novell is automatically approved by this organization, and anything that does the opposite is rejected? That's supposed to be credible? Please...
Slashdotters seem to forget that the overwhelming majority of countries approved OOXML, and don't feel there was anything wrong about that result. IBM didn't get their way for once, so what? Fine let IBM form their own organization and let Brazil and South Africa put more credence into IBM's puppet organization than the ISO while the rest of the world laughs.
This report turned out to be anti-Microsoft bullshit. Why is slashdot propagating lies? Is the McCain campaign running this site now?
However, Microsoft doesn't seem to understand that just because google's browser is worse, that doesn't mean IE8 is okay.
Since IE8's "suggested site" feature is opt-in, I don't know how anyone but the most dedicated Microsoft hater and/or Google apologist could say that it's not "okay".
In other words, no matter what Microsoft says or does, you'll condemn them, so what's the point? You've made up your mind to condemn Microsoft regardless while giving Google a pass for much worse.
You're logic is astonishing. Microsoft's Suggested Sites feature is much less intrusive than Google's yet you condemn Microsoft because they might become more intrusive in the future? Meanwhile you give Google a pass for being more intrusive than Microsoft in the present? Are you for real?
"it's not antitrust to not sell a competitor's products."
You're wrong here. Antitrust is whatever a judge says it is. Antitrust has no strict rules regarding what's kosher and what isn't. Hell, in the EU, antitrust is whatever the EC says it is, and they don't even provide due process when reaching their decisions (i.e. the accused has no right to face or cross-examine their accusers, secret evidence can be used against the accused, etc..).
Here's what's going to happen. It'll happen because it always happens.
Apple gets caught with its pants down. Everyone condemns Apple while its PR teams huddle together to find a way to deal with the issue. Finally, Apple announces that the issue was to do with an oversight caused by a miscommunication caused by an unrelated issue that actually was a case of the application not being approved yet, not that it was really rejected.
People outside of Apple circles will laugh, but then be flamed endlessly for laughing to the point that we no longer want to talk about it any more.
Google gets the very same treatment around here. For example, Google released the most draconian EULA ever with Chrome ("We own any and every thing that passes through the browser!"), people went ape shit (though the more extreme Google fanboys actually defended the EULA), Google reversed itself claiming that the EULA was due to some clerical error, now all is forgiven (at least by Google fanboys and most slashdotters).
Apple and Google get away with things like this over and over and over around these parts.
I don't think Microsoft signs others' drivers, they leave it to Verisign and the like. Anyway, the digital sig doesn't mean the driver is bug free, it merely means it came from a reputable source. Maybe Apple is no longer worthy of that title. Zdnet had a series of articles on this yesterday, where Apple is installing the MobileMe service when you install iTunes8, for God's sake. They install a bunch of other useless crap too, that bogs down the system.
"The problem with VISTA is that it was launched it BETA."
You mean like OSX 10.0?
(Actually, that's not fair to Vista; I've found Vista to be FAR more stable and usable than the mess that was OSX 10.0.)
I find Chrome to be the fastest browser I've ever used. But maybe it's because the laptop I use it on has 4 gigs of RAM; maybe it's geared toward lots of RAM.
I enjoy using it, but I've gradually gone back to Firefox/IE (which I use interchangeably). One reason is that Chrome's plugin support sucks (Flash applets are herky-jerky and Flash videos stop playing after a few seconds even though the Flash video continues to successfully load; Silverlight applets are quite literally orders of magnitude slower than on IE and Firefox; Photosynth plugin doesn't work; WMP plugin is slow but usable).
"However, 1) tabs running in separate threads shouldn't bring down the entire browser, if the application was properly designed in the first place;"
The main difference between threads and processes as far as robustness is concerned is that threads share one address space while each process has its own address space.
So consider the scenario where a tab's web page contains a Flash thingy, and a bug in the Flash plugin causes Flash to inappropriately write all over the browser's memory? How do you *design* against that? At least by using processes rather than threads, Flash is only corrupting the memory of the particular process that's hosting the tab rather than the memory of the browser in general, as would be the case with threads.
"2) I'm sure we'll still find plenty of ways to crash the primary process and/or cause even separately running processes to do this."
You're right here. There's already a well known bug in chrome that brings down the parent process and therefore all tabs. (It involves typing "evil:%" in the address bar or some such.) But the idea is that the parent process would have much less code than the child processes, and would be easier to be debug free (and it wouldn't host binary plugins by 3rd parties over whose quality control the browser devs have zero control).
"BTW, not only did Google copy MS by removing the menu bar, they also copied Microsoft by adding to the right of the tabs, a Tools dropdown menu, a Page dropdown menu, and a "New Tab" button. Why have slashdotters not condemned Google for copying?"
I just noticed that Chrome copies IE8's feature of highlighting the domain portion of the URL in the address bar too! ;)
It's my understanding that Chrome's one process per tab functionality depends on Windows' ability to have windows from multiple processes exist within the same window hierarchy, an ability that neither OS X nor Linux has. I don't expect Mac or Linux versions of Chrome any time soon (unless they remove the one process per tab feature for those platforms).
You're almost right.
IE8 does use a separate thread (rather than separate process per tab), but still, a crashed thread won't take down the whole process, only that tab (they probably have exception handlers catch the crash for each thread and so can recover gracefully).
So what?
Face facts: Flash is a monopoly in this market, and a competitor can't compete simply by being better (which Silverlight *is*, BTW). You, as a likely Windows hater that's pissed that supposedly better alternatives find it difficult to compete due to the inertia of Windows' entrechment, should understand that. So if some moolah helps grease the wheels, so what? Business if business. I didn't hear you complain that Google paid Dell to bundle Google Desktop on all of their PCs, did I?
H.264 requires twice as much CPU power to decode, and Flash doesn't support adaptive streaming like Silverlight does.
Not that it matters in this case, because the video is being fed via Move Network's video player, while Silverlight is handling the UI and overlays (so it's not like nbcolympics.com where Silverlight handled both the video and the UI of the video player).
Interestingly, I see that Move Networks today announced that Microsoft is now a "strategic investor".
"Please don't worship false idols."
That's funny, given that 99% of slashdotters literally worship one or more of RMS, Linus, or Steve Jobs.
BTW, Microsoft was the first to come up with many things. They were the first to factor their browser into a component that 3rd parties could use. They were the first to come up with OLE functionality. They were the first to have fast user switching. MS Office includes many firsts (pivot tables, irregular tables, on-the-fly spell and grammar checking, tabbed spreadsheets, modern UI, etc). Photosynth hasn't been done by anyone else (and no, QTVR isn't anything like Photosynth).
And other things that they may not have been the first, but took to the next level and/or delivered to the masses (e.g. Xbox Live, optical mice, ergonomic keyboards, fingerprint readers, Silverlight, Surface, programmable apps).
That's just a small sample. I remember a story some months ago that analized the patents awarded for each year since 2001 or whatever. The study showed that Microsoft was only second to IBM in number of patents, and that Microsoft's patents were of higher quality than anyone else's.
Actually, a whole LOT of people have left Google for Microsoft. It's not widely known because Microsoft doesn't make a big deal about it (unlike Google, who feels a need to make a big press statement when they hire from a competitor).
I'd guess there are more tech-savvy people using Windows and Mac (which the DNC site supports) than Linux.
This anti-tech/pro-tech chart is stupid and arbitrary.
According to the cnet's chart, anyone that's against piracy is anti-tech? Anyone that's for anti-porn filters in shcools is anti-tech? Complete bullshit. I'm sure almost everyone that voted for DCMA and internet filters consider themselves pro-tech, and have reasonable arguments despite being in disagreement with slashdot doctrine.
Same goes for most of the other bills that cnet arbitrarily decided would represent "tech" and arbitrarily decided whether yes or no on each issue was pro or anti tech.
So, a binary plugin should never be able to use unique features of the underlying OS? Please...
Anyway, Mac zealots would still be whining even if Microsoft had made Photosynth a standalone app, just as they did with World Wide Telescope.
According to these Mac zealots, it's wrong for Microsoft to make *any* Windows-specific software (standalone or browser plugins), but it's just fine and dandy for Apple to make Mac-only software, and such Mac-only software (like iLife) is even used as ammo for "Mac Rules, Windows Sucks!" declarations. (Well, turnabout is fair play, maybe Windows zealots can use Photosynth and World Wide Telescope as ammo for "Windows rules, Mac sucks!" nonsense.)
"Apple now, like MS, treats users as a means to generate a long term profit stream, not like a customer who paid a huge amount of money for a machine and expects to be treated as a customer."
What do you mean, Apple is "now" acting this way? Apple's always been like this. This is the company that for years actually charged users for the ability to watch videos at full screen with QuickTime player. Apple's never been an altruistic saint by any stretch of the imagination.
"And we still don't care."
I laugh that you actually say that with a sense of pride. I look at your statement as one more example of how out of touch typical slashdotters are.
Over a billion people (normal people) watched Usain Bolt run 100 meters at a blistering 9.69 seconds, and were thrilled at the spectacle. But the typical slashdotter cares more about recompiling his kernel.
While you're at it, why not divide a nation's medal "points" by the nation's population, to really make things fair. Points per capita.
But I got a better idea - how about no point system at all? Which is what they have now. This isn't like a high school or college track meet where points are totaled to determine which side won the meet. It looks like China will win the most gold medals and most medals over all, but there won't be any official statement that "China won the Olympics". The medal count has no formal place in the rules, nor should it. It's just an informal stat that may or may not be interesting for fans to talk about. Bringing in a complicated system to formalize the medal count (or medal "points") into something that's officially meaningful would be pretty lame.
"You're a Slashdotter. Are you spouting ignorance regarding OOXML? Or are you spouting lies regarding OOXML? Those are the only two choices right?"
As a matter of fact, no, those aren't the only two choices.
Let me spell it out for you:
In the sentence "Slashdotters continue to spout either ignorance or lies regarding OOXML", "Slashdotters" does not mean "All slashdotters", it means "Slashdotters, in general". Anyone with a gradeschool level reading comprehension would understand that (it's very sad that that doesn't include you).
It is not about "We head Microsoft", it is about the fact that something like WordWrapLikeWord95 should not exist in an ISO standard.
Slashdotters are so ignorant on OOXML yet speak so authoritatively on the subject.
WordWrapLikeWord95 isn't in the ISO standard as an opaque concept like it was in the ECMA standard. WordWrapLikeWord95, et al, are fully detailed in the ISO standard as to exactly what you'd need to do to implement them, should you wish to do so. (Those settings have also been deprecated, only for use when reading the small percentage of old documents that originally used those settings; new documents should not use them, period.)
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2008/01/18/suppresstopspacingwp-compat-settings-1.aspx