Yes it would cost less in the long run, but in the short to medium term they'll be running around like headless chickens outside their comfort zone (sorry for the mixed metaphors).
For right now: If these guys are 'strategically' a Microsoft shop, then there's little you can do at your pay grade. Suck it up or leave.
And as much as I hate being tied to IE, I (putting my IT manager hat on) can see why I wouldn't want an unsupported browser on my network. And Mozilla doesn't make it easy to deploy Firefox across an enterprise (no group policy, no MSI -- I know about 3rd party tools but those don't really count)
And who knows, maybe your bosses are the nasty types who see the fact that IE performs poorly on modern websites as a 'feature'.
you'd be hard pressed to disagree that Mac OS X's font-rendering, kerning, and anti-aliasing abilities are far superior to those provided by Windows when presented with side-by-side examples.
That's _your_ opinion. For me, Windows's rendering looks great (OS X looks 'fuzzy' to me). I know my philistinism may hurt typography geeks, but really, most people don't care.
Without nukes, powers would confront each other in their own territories, leading to huge death tolls and devastation that were the hallmark of WWI and II.
Post nukes, conflict has been confined to the fringes of the world. Korea, Afghanistan (the Soviet-era fight), Vietnam -- these happened because the USA and the USSR deemed chose to fight it out over a piece of land no one cared _that_ much about, so that a loss could be accepted without 'going nuclear'. While it sucked if you were a citizen of these countries, the fact of the matter is that a war between the USA and USSR directly would have been much, much worse.
> Correlation does not equal causation
Wars between powers occurred fairly frequently throughout the last one thousand years. Post-nukes, they've stopped fighting each other _directly_. Most recent case: India v Pakistan -- 3 shooting wars in 24 years. Post-nukes: nothing, despite plenty of provocation. You keep looking for correlation coefficients. In the world of international relations, this is a bloody miracle and we'll take it.
> Like the peace that has been or is being kept in Korea, Vietnam, Iran, and Afghanistan?
This is the engineer's disease: all or nothing. There is and will be no perfect peace. The question is, are we better off keeping conflict on the sidelines rather than in major world capitals? Again, from a international relations perspective, yes!
Also, note that as countries like Vietnam and (South) Korea join the global 'core', it becomes increasingly unacceptable for them to be embroiled in conflict. You simply wouldn't have a Vietnam War or Korea War today.
Especially on a product that has "Designed... in California" on its back. Here are some alternative things Apple could do that would keep the app store clean and still go after the edu market:
1) Require app developers to keep screenshots G-rated. 1a) If necessary, ask app developers to keep the app names "clean". This is harder to do and I'm not comfortable about this, but the general guidance is that "Playboy" and "Wobble" is okay, but "AssTits Deluxe" is not. There should be bright-line guidance for what is okay and what is not. 2) Use content ratings to keep things at (roughtly) R or even M level. Users should have to manually change settings to see NC-17-rated content. 3) Only allow folks with credit cards (nominally adults) to see NC-17 rated content. 4) Extend enterprise policies (which the iPhone already supports) to allow admins to block levels of content.
These are from the top of my head. But all of these are better than going all Taliban on app developers.
If that's suddenly a bug, then submit it as a bug/feature request, instead of, yes, philosophically discussing it here. It's your problem, so you go ask for it to be fixed; we're just telling you how it's not a problem for many.
I can do better, I can ignore Opera and watch it squished into an ever-shrinking corner of the marketplace. Pretty soon they can't even whine to the EU about getting their asses kicked in the marketplace.
Also, lots of users have pointed this bug out to Opera devs before. Google it -- it's not a new problem. They've done nothing so far.
While doing that - get off your high horse and remember that Opera, among browsers, has one of the lesser problems with unfulfilled promises. How many years FF is plagued with resource hunger? (and why Seamonkey is..snappier?) Where's the link to Minimo release from few years back, running perfectly on my 200 MHz ARM11, 20 MiB user ram Symbian phone? Don't get me started on hard and painfull limits of Chrome scalability.
I'm glad Opera works well for you, so why're you on a jihad to make sure it doesn't work well for others? And Chrome's and Firefox's failings stop Opera from being better... how?
Also, you really managed to miss that some of us live in places where Opera is not a niche product at all? Wow...
I don't care if Opera is big in Ulan Bator or Timbuktu. In the larger browser marketplace, it's a distant #5, and shrinking. Frankly, with users like you acting providing such helpful community support for the product (and yes, that was sarcastic), they deserve all the shit they get.
> Now, why all those people suddenly have to adapt to the way of browsers totally dominating different region of the world?
Because Opera cares enough about customizability to allow you to create your own shortcuts. In that light, the inability to remap ctrl-click is a bug (a limitation in the remapping system), not a philosophical discussion about whether Opera should adapt to others needs or not.
I realize minority computer groups quickly adopt a bunker mentality (see also: Amiga, Be and pre-1997 Apple) but really, the attitude doesn't help. Opera is a good browser and can grow market share, but not if its community ignores what potential new converts are saying.
(FWIW, I've used Opera off and on since 2000. But it still bugs the hell out of me that using Opera is a little bit different from using my other regulars -- Firefox, Chrome and Safari. In terms of user experience, it's a papercut. This is especially ironic because Opera is so customizable.)
And what's this obsession with the middle mouse button anyway? Wake-up call: most PCs don't have a real 3rd mouse button. Certainly most laptops don't. The fact that the mouse-wheel can be used as one might appeal to the gamer/geek demographic, but it's really not as comfortable as a, you know, real button (explained here).
I use FF/Chrome/Safari regularly. I'd love to use Opera more. But I can't because of a limitation in their keyboard customization system. And it's hilarious to see Opera fans defend Opera by saying "they don't see" why a particular industry-standard shortcut is important.
When the top 4 browsers in terms of market share all use ctrl click, Opera can either play ball or be the browser that has the dorky 'different' shortcuts. With the latter strategy, I see its market share going down, not up.
Every Tom, Dick, and Harry browser that comes along? IE8/Firefox/Chrome/Safari, which are #1-4 in the marketplace, have very similar keyboard shortcuts. You'd think Opera would at least study its competition. Alternatively it could continue enjoying its niche as #5.
Ctrl-click allows you to open a number of pages in the background, quickly. Give it a try in Chrome/Firefox/IE8/Safari, on a link-rich page like news.google.com. Opera is alone in making it shift-ctrl-click. And no, this isn't something you can edit the.ini for -- at least, I've not been able to find a way so far. I'd be very grateful if you could point out a solution.
Netscape/Mozilla is older than IE, but Firefox still changed over to IE-ish shortcuts on Windows in order to be a more comfortable transition.
Also, I'm not asking Opera to shaft their loyal users. Opera is very customizable. There's no reason why they couldn't create a Firefox-ish shorcut set and let users choose that as an option. In fact, right now my biggest gripe is that their customization doesn't allow you to redefine ctrl-click consistently.
Please, show me how to open a new tab in the background with ctrl-click, like Firefox/Chrome/Safari/IE8. I have tried and it's been a bit difficult so far.
Laptops don't have a middle mouse button unless you buy an add-on.
> Opera used Shift for that purpose before other browsers even had tabs
Do you mean shift-click? That opens a new tab and gives it focus. I'm looking for opening a new tab in the background, which is currently bound to ctrl-shift-click. And of course the biggest oddity is that you can not change this binding easily.
I tried several of the Chrome Experiments on Opera 10.5, and everything ran very smoothly. Good going Opera.
Now if only they'd add an option to make the keyboard/mouse options more like Firefox/Chrome, I could use this as my default browser. It still bugs me that it's very, very hard to make a customizable browser like Opera open new tabs with a ctrl-click like every other browser.
My understanding that BT (or rather its subsidiary OpenReach) is the only one allowed to muck about digging ditches and inserting wires/cabinets on the street for phone/xDSL/FTTx lines. (Can't say about cable, although I've heard BT has dug for Virgin in some places -- perhaps under contract as you say).
What OFCOM (Office of Communications -- not OFTCOM) does mandate is *access* to the last mile. So all providers in the UK (say Virgin (yes, they do provide DSL), Tiscali, etc should be able to use the last mile exactly as BT does.
They do this in two ways -- either by bolting their own infrastructure into exchanges (called LLU or Local loop unbundling) and just depending on BT for the last-mile connectivity. This is the free-est you can be of BT in the UK if you use xDSL/FTTx, unless you live in Hull. The other alternatives are IPStream and Datastream. In both of these your supplier buys broadband capacity wholesale from BT, and resells it to you (but with differing levels of involvement from BT).
In fact, these days BT retail is supposed to buy capacity from BT wholesale in exactly the same way as other providers, to avoid a commercial advantage.
> allow competitive and fair access to the last mile and termination space in exchanges
*Access* alone to the last mile isn't enough for what we're talking about. Suppose I want to provide TownX with 100Mbps fiber. BT (or OpenReach) currently has no plans to deploy fiber in TownX. Thanks to BT's current legal monopoly, neither can I. This is what BT's announcement about opening up ducts etc could change.
There are lots of places as little as 2 miles from the town center that have piss-poor broadband because of the way telephone exchanges are located. Fiber to the Home/Fiber to the Cabinet is the obvious solution, but British Telecom have a monopoly on last-mile wiring in the UK*, and have very little incentive to deliver high-speed broadband to homes. And let's not even talk about exchange capacity, or their traffic-shaping practices. So yeah, if Google or anyone else is going to get involved, more power to them. Britain's positively stick-in-the-mud compared to Scandinavia, Korea and Japan**, and it'll take a lot of doin' to bring it into the 21st century.
*except for Hull and some cabled areas (and I think Virgin's cable ducts were dug by BT)
**though to be fair, most of the high-speed internet in these places is to be found only in densely populated urban areas. Anyone know what broadband in lightly populated small towns/villages is like in Scandinavia/Korea/Japan?
PS. There's a great site for UK Slashdot readers -- Broadband Notspots UK, it's worth a visit if you're checking out what a particular place is like broadband-wise.
Here's a taste of the changes between Tiger and Leopard/Snow Leopard. Even though Leopard->Snow Leopard was (relatively) incremental stabilization and refinement, remember that Leopard was a *big* upgrade.
Adding 10.4 support back to mozilla-central would mean switching back to ATSUI from Core Text, switching back to gcc-4.0 from gcc-4.2, and doing a bit of porting work for code that has been added to the tree since we dropped support for 10.4. Other areas where 10.4 support consumes our time, makes our code more complex or error-prone, and/or limits our capabilities include complex text input (IME), out-of-process plugins, printing, native menus, and Core Animation. Furthermore, Apple's upcoming JavaPlugin2 will not support Mac OS X 10.4.
True. But there's a difference between running it and running it *well*. Mobile phone manufacturers have been promoting the fact that their phones have web browsers and mail clients since, oh, 2003 at least. But they did a shitty job of implementing these (which gave the iPhone its big break). It's the same with Flash -- see the other reply from a N900 owner.
What's amusing about this thread is the number of Flash fanboys breathlessly proclaiming that Flash needs the latest and greatest hardware to run, and then simultaneously bitching to Apple for not including Flash in their memory, CPU and power-constrained mobile devices.
Exactly. They can progress all they want and assume that everyone runs super-powerful quad-cores with 4GB RAM*. But -- most mobile devices are not that powerful. Certainly not the iPhone. And that's a very good argument for keeping Flash off such devices.
(Note that Apple isn't the only one -- Firefox on Maemo disables Flash too, IIRC.)
*More than 4GB won't help because we're still waiting on a cross-platform 64 bit flavor of Flash, thanks very much.
Er, from a better read of full-disclosure, I see it was reported in June 2009, not Jan 2010 as I stated earlier. Still, that's a long time for a bug to have gone un-noticed.
> Windows 3.1 - 7 are often based on the same code set.
You, sir, do not have the vaguest idea of what you are talking about.
> to get into windows 3.1 you need to type in "win" at the DOS window.
I thought for a moment you meant Windows *NT* 3.1 - 7, but... it's clear that you didn't mean that.
FWIW, this bug affects all NT OSes right back to NT 3.1 (the first released version) and is an obscure kernel bug (it was only found in January 2010!). The BBC article was light on details except to say it "involves a utility that allows newer versions of Windows to run very old programs", but there's more detail from the always-excellent full-disclosure mailing list.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes it would cost less in the long run, but in the short to medium term they'll be running around like headless chickens outside their comfort zone (sorry for the mixed metaphors).
For right now: If these guys are 'strategically' a Microsoft shop, then there's little you can do at your pay grade. Suck it up or leave.
And as much as I hate being tied to IE, I (putting my IT manager hat on) can see why I wouldn't want an unsupported browser on my network. And Mozilla doesn't make it easy to deploy Firefox across an enterprise (no group policy, no MSI -- I know about 3rd party tools but those don't really count)
And who knows, maybe your bosses are the nasty types who see the fact that IE performs poorly on modern websites as a 'feature'.
That's _your_ opinion. For me, Windows's rendering looks great (OS X looks 'fuzzy' to me). I know my philistinism may hurt typography geeks, but really, most people don't care.
Without nukes, powers would confront each other in their own territories, leading to huge death tolls and devastation that were the hallmark of WWI and II.
Post nukes, conflict has been confined to the fringes of the world. Korea, Afghanistan (the Soviet-era fight), Vietnam -- these happened because the USA and the USSR deemed chose to fight it out over a piece of land no one cared _that_ much about, so that a loss could be accepted without 'going nuclear'. While it sucked if you were a citizen of these countries, the fact of the matter is that a war between the USA and USSR directly would have been much, much worse.
> Correlation does not equal causation
Wars between powers occurred fairly frequently throughout the last one thousand years. Post-nukes, they've stopped fighting each other _directly_. Most recent case: India v Pakistan -- 3 shooting wars in 24 years. Post-nukes: nothing, despite plenty of provocation. You keep looking for correlation coefficients. In the world of international relations, this is a bloody miracle and we'll take it.
> Like the peace that has been or is being kept in Korea, Vietnam, Iran, and Afghanistan?
This is the engineer's disease: all or nothing. There is and will be no perfect peace. The question is, are we better off keeping conflict on the sidelines rather than in major world capitals? Again, from a international relations perspective, yes!
Also, note that as countries like Vietnam and (South) Korea join the global 'core', it becomes increasingly unacceptable for them to be embroiled in conflict. You simply wouldn't have a Vietnam War or Korea War today.
Guns == nukes, now?
And given how nukes have kept the peace for over 60 years now, I wouldn't say they have no redeeming qualities.
> A gun is million more times obscene then a female breast!
Speak for yourself. I love 'em both.
Guns are precision-crafted machines. Done right they can be beautiful. Idiots wielding them to cause mayhem -- now _that's_ obscene.
Especially on a product that has "Designed ... in California" on its back. Here are some alternative things Apple could do that would keep the app store clean and still go after the edu market:
1) Require app developers to keep screenshots G-rated.
1a) If necessary, ask app developers to keep the app names "clean". This is harder to do and I'm not comfortable about this, but the general guidance is that "Playboy" and "Wobble" is okay, but "AssTits Deluxe" is not. There should be bright-line guidance for what is okay and what is not.
2) Use content ratings to keep things at (roughtly) R or even M level. Users should have to manually change settings to see NC-17-rated content.
3) Only allow folks with credit cards (nominally adults) to see NC-17 rated content.
4) Extend enterprise policies (which the iPhone already supports) to allow admins to block levels of content.
These are from the top of my head. But all of these are better than going all Taliban on app developers.
Question: Is "The Lomborg Deception" peer-reviewed?
I can do better, I can ignore Opera and watch it squished into an ever-shrinking corner of the marketplace. Pretty soon they can't even whine to the EU about getting their asses kicked in the marketplace.
Also, lots of users have pointed this bug out to Opera devs before. Google it -- it's not a new problem. They've done nothing so far.
I'm glad Opera works well for you, so why're you on a jihad to make sure it doesn't work well for others? And Chrome's and Firefox's failings stop Opera from being better ... how?
I don't care if Opera is big in Ulan Bator or Timbuktu. In the larger browser marketplace, it's a distant #5, and shrinking. Frankly, with users like you acting providing such helpful community support for the product (and yes, that was sarcastic), they deserve all the shit they get.
> Now, why all those people suddenly have to adapt to the way of browsers totally dominating different region of the world?
Because Opera cares enough about customizability to allow you to create your own shortcuts. In that light, the inability to remap ctrl-click is a bug (a limitation in the remapping system), not a philosophical discussion about whether Opera should adapt to others needs or not.
Also, (not being sarcastic or trying to be funny) dear Opera users: please learn to take constructive criticism. When someone tells you about a feature request, try to understand what's being asked for instead of using the standard responses of "why does anyone need that", "you can use $far_more_cumbersome_alternative instead" or "buy the right kind of hardware" or (even better!) "opera had it first, why should opera change, everyone should change to match opera". Don't make up excuses for the dev team. If you frequent the Opera user forums, ask them why the limitation exists in the first place -- it may be easy to fix.
I realize minority computer groups quickly adopt a bunker mentality (see also: Amiga, Be and pre-1997 Apple) but really, the attitude doesn't help. Opera is a good browser and can grow market share, but not if its community ignores what potential new converts are saying.
(FWIW, I've used Opera off and on since 2000. But it still bugs the hell out of me that using Opera is a little bit different from using my other regulars -- Firefox, Chrome and Safari. In terms of user experience, it's a papercut. This is especially ironic because Opera is so customizable.)
Does not work (Opera 10.5, Windows XP)
And what's this obsession with the middle mouse button anyway? Wake-up call: most PCs don't have a real 3rd mouse button. Certainly most laptops don't. The fact that the mouse-wheel can be used as one might appeal to the gamer/geek demographic, but it's really not as comfortable as a, you know, real button (explained here).
I use FF/Chrome/Safari regularly. I'd love to use Opera more. But I can't because of a limitation in their keyboard customization system. And it's hilarious to see Opera fans defend Opera by saying "they don't see" why a particular industry-standard shortcut is important.
When the top 4 browsers in terms of market share all use ctrl click, Opera can either play ball or be the browser that has the dorky 'different' shortcuts. With the latter strategy, I see its market share going down, not up.
Every Tom, Dick, and Harry browser that comes along? IE8/Firefox/Chrome/Safari, which are #1-4 in the marketplace, have very similar keyboard shortcuts. You'd think Opera would at least study its competition. Alternatively it could continue enjoying its niche as #5.
Ctrl-click allows you to open a number of pages in the background, quickly. Give it a try in Chrome/Firefox/IE8/Safari, on a link-rich page like news.google.com. Opera is alone in making it shift-ctrl-click. And no, this isn't something you can edit the .ini for -- at least, I've not been able to find a way so far. I'd be very grateful if you could point out a solution.
Netscape/Mozilla is older than IE, but Firefox still changed over to IE-ish shortcuts on Windows in order to be a more comfortable transition.
Also, I'm not asking Opera to shaft their loyal users. Opera is very customizable. There's no reason why they couldn't create a Firefox-ish shorcut set and let users choose that as an option. In fact, right now my biggest gripe is that their customization doesn't allow you to redefine ctrl-click consistently.
> Preferences, Advanced, Shortcuts?
Please, show me how to open a new tab in the background with ctrl-click, like Firefox/Chrome/Safari/IE8. I have tried and it's been a bit difficult so far.
> What's wrong with the middle mouse button?
Laptops don't have a middle mouse button unless you buy an add-on.
> Opera used Shift for that purpose before other browsers even had tabs
Do you mean shift-click? That opens a new tab and gives it focus. I'm looking for opening a new tab in the background, which is currently bound to ctrl-shift-click. And of course the biggest oddity is that you can not change this binding easily.
I tried several of the Chrome Experiments on Opera 10.5, and everything ran very smoothly. Good going Opera.
Now if only they'd add an option to make the keyboard/mouse options more like Firefox/Chrome, I could use this as my default browser. It still bugs me that it's very, very hard to make a customizable browser like Opera open new tabs with a ctrl-click like every other browser.
My understanding that BT (or rather its subsidiary OpenReach) is the only one allowed to muck about digging ditches and inserting wires/cabinets on the street for phone/xDSL/FTTx lines. (Can't say about cable, although I've heard BT has dug for Virgin in some places -- perhaps under contract as you say).
What OFCOM (Office of Communications -- not OFTCOM) does mandate is *access* to the last mile. So all providers in the UK (say Virgin (yes, they do provide DSL), Tiscali, etc should be able to use the last mile exactly as BT does.
They do this in two ways -- either by bolting their own infrastructure into exchanges (called LLU or Local loop unbundling) and just depending on BT for the last-mile connectivity. This is the free-est you can be of BT in the UK if you use xDSL/FTTx, unless you live in Hull. The other alternatives are IPStream and Datastream. In both of these your supplier buys broadband capacity wholesale from BT, and resells it to you (but with differing levels of involvement from BT).
In fact, these days BT retail is supposed to buy capacity from BT wholesale in exactly the same way as other providers, to avoid a commercial advantage.
> allow competitive and fair access to the last mile and termination space in exchanges
*Access* alone to the last mile isn't enough for what we're talking about. Suppose I want to provide TownX with 100Mbps fiber. BT (or OpenReach) currently has no plans to deploy fiber in TownX. Thanks to BT's current legal monopoly, neither can I. This is what BT's announcement about opening up ducts etc could change.
There are lots of places as little as 2 miles from the town center that have piss-poor broadband because of the way telephone exchanges are located. Fiber to the Home/Fiber to the Cabinet is the obvious solution, but British Telecom have a monopoly on last-mile wiring in the UK*, and have very little incentive to deliver high-speed broadband to homes. And let's not even talk about exchange capacity, or their traffic-shaping practices. So yeah, if Google or anyone else is going to get involved, more power to them. Britain's positively stick-in-the-mud compared to Scandinavia, Korea and Japan**, and it'll take a lot of doin' to bring it into the 21st century.
*except for Hull and some cabled areas (and I think Virgin's cable ducts were dug by BT)
**though to be fair, most of the high-speed internet in these places is to be found only in densely populated urban areas. Anyone know what broadband in lightly populated small towns/villages is like in Scandinavia/Korea/Japan?
PS. There's a great site for UK Slashdot readers -- Broadband Notspots UK, it's worth a visit if you're checking out what a particular place is like broadband-wise.
Here's a taste of the changes between Tiger and Leopard/Snow Leopard. Even though Leopard->Snow Leopard was (relatively) incremental stabilization and refinement, remember that Leopard was a *big* upgrade.
True. But there's a difference between running it and running it *well*. Mobile phone manufacturers have been promoting the fact that their phones have web browsers and mail clients since, oh, 2003 at least. But they did a shitty job of implementing these (which gave the iPhone its big break). It's the same with Flash -- see the other reply from a N900 owner.
What's amusing about this thread is the number of Flash fanboys breathlessly proclaiming that Flash needs the latest and greatest hardware to run, and then simultaneously bitching to Apple for not including Flash in their memory, CPU and power-constrained mobile devices.
I wonder if they realize the irony.
Exactly. They can progress all they want and assume that everyone runs super-powerful quad-cores with 4GB RAM*. But -- most mobile devices are not that powerful. Certainly not the iPhone. And that's a very good argument for keeping Flash off such devices.
(Note that Apple isn't the only one -- Firefox on Maemo disables Flash too, IIRC.)
*More than 4GB won't help because we're still waiting on a cross-platform 64 bit flavor of Flash, thanks very much.
Er, from a better read of full-disclosure, I see it was reported in June 2009, not Jan 2010 as I stated earlier. Still, that's a long time for a bug to have gone un-noticed.
> Windows 3.1 - 7 are often based on the same code set.
You, sir, do not have the vaguest idea of what you are talking about.
> to get into windows 3.1 you need to type in "win" at the DOS window.
I thought for a moment you meant Windows *NT* 3.1 - 7, but ... it's clear that you didn't mean that.
FWIW, this bug affects all NT OSes right back to NT 3.1 (the first released version) and is an obscure kernel bug (it was only found in January 2010!). The BBC article was light on details except to say it "involves a utility that allows newer versions of Windows to run very old programs", but there's more detail from the always-excellent full-disclosure mailing list.