Yeah, you must have.
Google News hits for Netscape: 1550
Google News hits for Firefox: 2500
I admit it's a not reliable metric, but maybe it is data point saying that the Firefox brand is at least comparable to Netscape. Maybe you have other data sources?
You're new here, aren't you? (sorry, had to say it)
No one is defending stealing. The problem is (or this is the belief of many here) that it is not possible to write software without violating patents unvoluntarily: if you write a large enough software package, you just end up implementing patented algorithms without realising it. This leads to a situation where only big corporations can develop software (since they have a stack patents that they can bargain with when someone claims they're violating a patent). A "GNU license" is not going to help you there.
It's explained right there in the blurb: 2.6.even is supposed to be the stable kernel, the one Distro vendors will use. 2.6.odd is the version with new features.
It's the same as before, just on a more rapid cycle.
The problem here is (or at least this is the belief held by many) that it's nearly impossible to write software without unknowingly violating a patent. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that Linux, Windows and every other large software package probably violates various patents.
Actually the differences in javascript implementations are very few, maybe you are referring to DOM differences? Which ever the case, could you please point out the innovative language features Microsoft has added? I'm not interested in bashing MS here, I just think your comment has very little to do with reality.
Also, how has Firefox exactly been better on this front? I know that there have been some changes in e.g. secretly handling document.all-calls, but that stuff is not Firefox-specific. Please elaborate.
Ok, I need to apologize. I shouldn't have used the term "gloat" in the last response, it was not justified. Maybe the overall tone is a little aggressive too.
Damn this internet - you say stupid things in the heat of the argument, and then the stupid things probably end up outliving you...
I wasn't dissing Linux (as a matter of fact I'm very pleased with all the Linux machines I use - e.g. my media box just keeps going without any admin work,I don't think I've touched it since fall). My point was this: Anecdotal evidence is just anecdotal. Nothing more, nothing less.
To make myself more clear, my point applied to your post would look like this:
Comparing the stability of a windows-gaming-machine and a linux-firewall is fine (a bit pointless maybe, but there is nothing wrong about it). However, the statistical relevance of a sample of 1 is pretty much nonexistant.
In other words: Your gloating about your WinXP-firewall box crashing in a week is not statistical evidence. If there are plenty of statistics that back GPs words The linux core is more stable and more reliable than the windows core, then you can probably point just a few for me quite easily - because I sure haven't found them.
Now that I've read the last paragraph, I'm starting to believe I've been trolled: You are seriously using the existence of computer hotlines as a proof of better stability of Linux kernel compared to Windows? No disrespect, but that does not sound very intelligent.
Now, this is just anecdotal, but I can't remember the last time I saw a BSOD - and I work with XP, win2k and 2003 server OSes quite a lot. I certainly haven't seen one in the last two years. On the other hand I have seen a Linux kernel panic in the last three months. Like I said, this is just my experience - on different hardware or with different software Mileage Will Vary.
I have a suggestion that might make this conversation more fruitful: If someones is going to use language like The linux core is more stable and more reliable than the windows core. Period., that someone should back it up with some real statistics. Otherwise he/she should maybe say something like In my experience Linux core has been more stable and reliable, that way he/she wouldn't be talking out of his/her ass.
This sounded so wierd that I had to google for it, and no shit:
John C. Dvorak:
"IDLE-TIME PROCESS. Once in a while the system will go into an idle mode, requiring from five minutes to half an hour to unwind. It's weird, and I almost always have to reboot. When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing? Once in a while, after you've clicked all over the screen trying to get the system to do something other than idle, all your clicks suddenly ignite and the screen goes crazy with activity. This is not right." (link)
The dreaded resource-hogging Idle process... I hope my computer never catches that.
Your perception of "minimum quality you'll accept" has been influenced by marketing. That "5 star test" result is marketing. Honda having plants in the US is partly marketing... I could continue, but maybe that's unnecessary...
Of course some people are less influenced by ads and other marketing than others, but saying you're absolutely sure you're immune is living in denial.
Yes, that's exactly the bizarre idea GP was referring to - and it sounds like you're defending it on the basis that, you know, it could be even more bizarre (if the charge was based on call origin).
Isaac Newton and whole host of other Giants in the world of Science would most certainly disagree.
Well, sure. A lot of them would also have been thrown in jail if they would have done anything else... If you have a reference for that school of thought that says without Christianity a lot of Scientific discoveries would have been a really late in coming, I'd like to see it. Not trying to annoy you, I'm just curious.
[Christianity is] largely respobsible for driving out superstion in a lot of cultures.
May I rephrase: "Christianity is largely responsible for replacing a lot of superstitions with other ones".
I'm sorry if I sound aggressive. I'm not dismissing the idea of the supremacy of Christianity as an ideology altogether, I just find it very, very arrogant that someone would support that without extremely good scientific proof.
The grandparent didn't express his views with good manners, I'll give you that - but the core idea of his post is still true: The church has through the years made up 'truths' and tried suppress scientific research that tests those 'truths'. Isaac Newton or other christian scientists might have believed in the scientific method, but it seems that the church as an entity does not...
Read the GP again. He didn't suggest anything. He said blaiming just the UN for being powerless in preventing genocides is stupid, nothing more. There are no mentions of unilateral military action, how did you arrive there?
People who might have thought that Debian was only for masochists discovered Ubuntu and decided it was fast, easy, and didn't become "legacy" in 12 months
Sure, but the clairvoyant market is pretty small. What about other people?
As a result, you have people like the Mozilla Foundation who are so completely anal about specificiations that they adhere very strictly to how things should be, giving no room for error. This causes huge problems for the internet community...
There is another POV: The laxness of earlier browsers is what caused the huge problems:
- rendering is different between browsers, because no-one knows how malformed HTML should be rendered.
- countless of hours have been poured on developing quirks modes, when real work on security and new features could have been done instead.
- new features can't be added, because they would break existing quirks.
We can break cycle, if we want to. I will be painful but worth it.
W3C is going to have to stop being so stubborn and accept more of these changes that Microsoft has implemented on their own.... Like in Javascript, allowing one to access an ID'd element in the page directly, instead of having to go through document.getelementbyid...
We disagree on who is stubborn, but regardless: You never really told us how the javascript solution is worse than the microsoft solution?
I mean really, in this day and age, one should be able to do something as simple as rotate an image on a page without needing a plugin like Java or Flash.
I believe I have just been trolled. Well, I'll bite: That has to be one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard. It's a friggin' web browser. You know, for reading web pages, not editing images in them.
Have you measured the startup time and memory footprint of your favourite image manipulations software lately? Would you like them to be added to your browsers startup time and memory footprint?
You are using a web developer site to prove your point about general market share. If we believe that 69% w3schools visitors use IE, than we really can't be sure that the current number for general populace is 60-80%, can we? If we take out w3schools and Upsdell out of the stats you provided, IE has an average of well over 80%...
I'm not saying your stats are worthless, I'm saying trying to prove anything about general web usage with those numbers is stupid or fraudulent.
Without protection for IP, including patents, the value of software falls to zero, which many here argue in favor of.
You are confusing the issue (purposefully, it seems). You defend patents by saying 'IP protection is needed'. No-one is opposing that (as the status of copyright hasn't been challenged), so why do you need to say it?
Patenting software is not a black and white issue, and presenting it as such is underestimating your audience. No-one is saying patents do not have the positive effects you mentioned. What the opposers of SW patents are saying is that monopolies granted by the patents have severe side-effects (that are inherent to the software industry), and that those side-effects are bad enough to counter the positive effects.
I understand that in a complex matter like this people will disagree. But why the hell does the discussion always have to be black and white? Patents are not a god-given right - they are a compromise solution to a specific problem. If the problem set changes, or new solutions become available, the solution should be re-evaluated. Pretty simple.
Slashdot Mirror
Google News hits for Netscape: 1550
Google News hits for Firefox: 2500
I admit it's a not reliable metric, but maybe it is data point saying that the Firefox brand is at least comparable to Netscape. Maybe you have other data sources?
No one is defending stealing. The problem is (or this is the belief of many here) that it is not possible to write software without violating patents unvoluntarily: if you write a large enough software package, you just end up implementing patented algorithms without realising it. This leads to a situation where only big corporations can develop software (since they have a stack patents that they can bargain with when someone claims they're violating a patent). A "GNU license" is not going to help you there.
It's the same as before, just on a more rapid cycle.
Did you read the paragraph you linked to? As long as they're just using the modifications themselves they are under no obligation to publish them.
Yeah, and it could have a web browser too!
The problem here is (or at least this is the belief held by many) that it's nearly impossible to write software without unknowingly violating a patent. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that Linux, Windows and every other large software package probably violates various patents.
No need to post all the differences - I've done my share of web development. I'm just wondering about the innovation part...
Don't believe everything you read - porn is an industry where they exaggerate the size of everything. Forbes has an old but good article about this.
Also, how has Firefox exactly been better on this front? I know that there have been some changes in e.g. secretly handling document.all-calls, but that stuff is not Firefox-specific. Please elaborate.
Damn this internet - you say stupid things in the heat of the argument, and then the stupid things probably end up outliving you...
I wasn't dissing Linux (as a matter of fact I'm very pleased with all the Linux machines I use - e.g. my media box just keeps going without any admin work,I don't think I've touched it since fall). My point was this: Anecdotal evidence is just anecdotal. Nothing more, nothing less.
To make myself more clear, my point applied to your post would look like this: Comparing the stability of a windows-gaming-machine and a linux-firewall is fine (a bit pointless maybe, but there is nothing wrong about it). However, the statistical relevance of a sample of 1 is pretty much nonexistant.
In other words: Your gloating about your WinXP-firewall box crashing in a week is not statistical evidence. If there are plenty of statistics that back GPs words The linux core is more stable and more reliable than the windows core, then you can probably point just a few for me quite easily - because I sure haven't found them. Now that I've read the last paragraph, I'm starting to believe I've been trolled: You are seriously using the existence of computer hotlines as a proof of better stability of Linux kernel compared to Windows? No disrespect, but that does not sound very intelligent.
I have a suggestion that might make this conversation more fruitful: If someones is going to use language like The linux core is more stable and more reliable than the windows core. Period., that someone should back it up with some real statistics. Otherwise he/she should maybe say something like In my experience Linux core has been more stable and reliable, that way he/she wouldn't be talking out of his/her ass.
Your perception of "minimum quality you'll accept" has been influenced by marketing. That "5 star test" result is marketing. Honda having plants in the US is partly marketing... I could continue, but maybe that's unnecessary...
Of course some people are less influenced by ads and other marketing than others, but saying you're absolutely sure you're immune is living in denial.
Yes, that's exactly the bizarre idea GP was referring to - and it sounds like you're defending it on the basis that, you know, it could be even more bizarre (if the charge was based on call origin).
Parents point of view is not the most common, but that doesn't make him a troll.
I'm sorry if I sound aggressive. I'm not dismissing the idea of the supremacy of Christianity as an ideology altogether, I just find it very, very arrogant that someone would support that without extremely good scientific proof.
The grandparent didn't express his views with good manners, I'll give you that - but the core idea of his post is still true: The church has through the years made up 'truths' and tried suppress scientific research that tests those 'truths'. Isaac Newton or other christian scientists might have believed in the scientific method, but it seems that the church as an entity does not...
Read the GP again. He didn't suggest anything. He said blaiming just the UN for being powerless in preventing genocides is stupid, nothing more. There are no mentions of unilateral military action, how did you arrive there?
They are actually ISO standards now. If that's not standard enough, I don't know what is...
- rendering is different between browsers, because no-one knows how malformed HTML should be rendered.
- countless of hours have been poured on developing quirks modes, when real work on security and new features could have been done instead.
- new features can't be added, because they would break existing quirks.
We can break cycle, if we want to. I will be painful but worth it.
We disagree on who is stubborn, but regardless: You never really told us how the javascript solution is worse than the microsoft solution?
I believe I have just been trolled. Well, I'll bite: That has to be one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard. It's a friggin' web browser. You know, for reading web pages, not editing images in them.Have you measured the startup time and memory footprint of your favourite image manipulations software lately? Would you like them to be added to your browsers startup time and memory footprint?
It doesn't need to work for the majority, that's the point. A stupid minority is enough to ruin it for the rest of us.
I'm not saying your stats are worthless, I'm saying trying to prove anything about general web usage with those numbers is stupid or fraudulent.
Patenting software is not a black and white issue, and presenting it as such is underestimating your audience. No-one is saying patents do not have the positive effects you mentioned. What the opposers of SW patents are saying is that monopolies granted by the patents have severe side-effects (that are inherent to the software industry), and that those side-effects are bad enough to counter the positive effects.
I understand that in a complex matter like this people will disagree. But why the hell does the discussion always have to be black and white? Patents are not a god-given right - they are a compromise solution to a specific problem. If the problem set changes, or new solutions become available, the solution should be re-evaluated. Pretty simple.