And their first objective will be to bring with them all of the ridiculous buffer overrun exploits plaguing Internet Explorer. For every engineer Microsoft throws at an open-source project, someone else needs to proofread their code.
I know you're trying to be funny, but I've seen a huge surge in the number of automatic spyware XPI installers showing up on all kinds of different websites over the past few months. Currently, the situation is no better than Microsoft's "click yes to install" ActiveX controls, and Firefox's don't even need to be signed to be installed. by default.
The only upside, I guess, is that they're never installed via buffer overrun exploits.
Believe it or not, everyone that works for Microsoft isn't an evil person trying to crush the free software movement.
Of course not; they have little to gain from crushing Mozilla. They do, however, have a lot to gain by crushing Linux, and by attempting to persuade the Firefox developers to "embrace and extend," and tie themselves down to more Microsoft proprietary APIs, this is what they're going for. First and foremost, Microsoft is a company, and they're not just being altruistic. Everything, when you get right down to it, is financially motivated.
If this guy is able to admit openly on a Microsoft website that he doesn't even use IE, maybe developers should listen to him.
Sales 101 Rule #1: Tell the other guy what he wants to hear.
If the Mozilla developers feel that cross platform is most important (which I feel is most important), they should just consider what these suggestions mean and maybe make them design objectives if they are at all possible.
How would a relational database filesystem layer, a bloated 3D interface graphics framework, and a new UI markup language (which Mozilla already has) help a web browser in the slightest?
Not quite. If you follow the news regarding SCO, BayStar wanted to pull their investment because they didn't think SCO was investing enough resources in the IP lawsuits, and wanted them to all but entirely ditch their Unix "business." Unless they really are being paid by companies with vested interests in Linux's demise, like Microsoft, they want people to use Linux; that's more people to sue.
Maybe just have a shell script called "Install" on the distribution media and give it a nice icon?;)
You're over-thinking the solution; dragging and dropping it somewhere is a lot more intuitive for newbie users than using some cryptic global installation utility.
No, except on massively slow machines (<= 300 MHz), I've definitely found Firefox to be much snappier at page rendering than Internet Explorer. You might be having some trouble if you're using extensions that slow the browser to a crawl, like Tabbrowser Extensions, but I've found that a vanilla Firefox is much faster than IE, especially on faster machines, at rendering everything but heavy (1000+ row) dynamically-sized tables and shitty AOL Hometown pages with 300 animated GIFs running at once.
Sun is first and foremost a hardware company, providing integrated solutions with Solaris and Linux. They really have very little to gain, profit-wise, from Java.
Read the thread. He hasn't worked there for twenty years, but he's still permitted to have an office for God-knows-what-reason.
Re:Previous extensions, like mp3-pro, not successf
on
MP3...in Surround Sound
·
· Score: 4, Informative
But it doesn't have six channels, it's the same old crap.
From the article, again:
Fraunhofer reproduces surround sound by adding to MP3 encoding extra information that describes the spatial characteristics of the main audio track.
Using this extra information helps MP3 players recreate the surround sound effect.
There's no extra channels, just an extra layer telling the player how to manipulate the two existing audio channels to obtain a surround-like effect. While the merits of this approach alone make me skeptical, what really bothers me about this is how different players are all going to have completely different implementations of using this extra layer of data to manipulate the audio channels, meaning we're going to have no consistency whatsoever with how it even sounds.
Re:Previous extensions, like mp3-pro, not successf
on
MP3...in Surround Sound
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Not to mention how the method of adding pretend "surround sound" that they're proposing is retarded.
For what it's worth, MP3Pro also wasn't really backwards-compatible, even though it claimed to be. In a format that didn't support the extensions, it cut off the entire high end and it sounded like absolute shit. It remains to be seen if the same issue will be seen in these surround MP3s, but if it really doesn't add too much, like the article is implying, I don't imagine it will be a cataclysmic failure.
Besides, there aren't that many surround-sound audio CDs to rip yet, so something like this wouldn't gain in popularity until a more popular codec has already superseded it. I wouldn't worry about it gaining any type of dominance.
Music encoded with the new system will work with older hardware and software MP3 players but the extras will only the surround sound when piped through a player that can do something with the extra information.
Prior art will invalidate a patent. No one needs to patent a damned thing.
Re:Linux Has Travelled Far... In The Wrong Directi
on
Linus on Linux in 1994
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I propose saying how free linux is and that that is what makes the big difference at the end of the day in how it is good as a system and in how it is good as a community.
Do you think your average user cares about this? Chances are he's running a pirated copy of Windows already, so he could care less whether or not it's free, and certainly won't bother to make the gratis/libre or beer/speech distinction since he simply doesn't care. What matters is the software support, and whether or not he can quickly and easily perform all of the tasks he's used to on Windows. What also matters is the hardware support, and the guarantee that the TV tuner card he just bought for $20 after rebate at Best Buy works properly with his operating system.
Of course, the issue with a lot of Linux evangelists is that they fail to realize how Windows is good enough for most people, that people are extremely stubborn, and will only change when forced to. My aunt Kathy doesn't care that Linux is made by a team of volunteers all around the world, or that Gnome and KDE offer many superior features to Windows. She cares that she can hop onto overpriced and under-featured America Online garbage and check her email. This is true of the majority of computer users, not the minority of dumb ones.
You can preach about free software all you want, but in the end, does it get the job done? And is it enough of an improvement to get people to give up what they've been using for years and learn an entirely new system?
There is absolutely no doubt that the Linux community has come a tremendous distance even in the last year or so. But we need to fucking work and work and work at improving the quality of the software, and drivers, if it's going to gain any mass-market acceptance. We're not done yet.
Slashdot Mirror
And their first objective will be to bring with them all of the ridiculous buffer overrun exploits plaguing Internet Explorer. For every engineer Microsoft throws at an open-source project, someone else needs to proofread their code.
I know you're trying to be funny, but I've seen a huge surge in the number of automatic spyware XPI installers showing up on all kinds of different websites over the past few months. Currently, the situation is no better than Microsoft's "click yes to install" ActiveX controls, and Firefox's don't even need to be signed to be installed. by default.
The only upside, I guess, is that they're never installed via buffer overrun exploits.
Sales 101 Rule #1: Tell the other guy what he wants to hear.
How would a relational database filesystem layer, a bloated 3D interface graphics framework, and a new UI markup language (which Mozilla already has) help a web browser in the slightest?
Fuel.
Not quite. If you follow the news regarding SCO, BayStar wanted to pull their investment because they didn't think SCO was investing enough resources in the IP lawsuits, and wanted them to all but entirely ditch their Unix "business." Unless they really are being paid by companies with vested interests in Linux's demise, like Microsoft, they want people to use Linux; that's more people to sue.
GNU/Linux is misleading as well, as most distributions include non-GNU utilities, many of which are derived from BSD or other sources.
Let's not forget Resident Evil, Tomb Raider and Wing Commander.
Oh really?
Something's still wrong here.
Then why can't I find a single pair of pants that don't have those fucking ridiculous "stonewashed" bleach stains all over them?
Walmart.com to Offer LindowsOS (February 4, 2003)
Walmart.com Offers a New Linux PC (July 14, 2003)
Sun Sells Linux PC at Wal-Mart (March 31, 2004)
No, except on massively slow machines (<= 300 MHz), I've definitely found Firefox to be much snappier at page rendering than Internet Explorer. You might be having some trouble if you're using extensions that slow the browser to a crawl, like Tabbrowser Extensions, but I've found that a vanilla Firefox is much faster than IE, especially on faster machines, at rendering everything but heavy (1000+ row) dynamically-sized tables and shitty AOL Hometown pages with 300 animated GIFs running at once.
Sun is first and foremost a hardware company, providing integrated solutions with Solaris and Linux. They really have very little to gain, profit-wise, from Java.
Seems you've answered your own question already.
Read the thread. He hasn't worked there for twenty years, but he's still permitted to have an office for God-knows-what-reason.
From the article, again:
There's no extra channels, just an extra layer telling the player how to manipulate the two existing audio channels to obtain a surround-like effect. While the merits of this approach alone make me skeptical, what really bothers me about this is how different players are all going to have completely different implementations of using this extra layer of data to manipulate the audio channels, meaning we're going to have no consistency whatsoever with how it even sounds.
Not to mention how the method of adding pretend "surround sound" that they're proposing is retarded.
For what it's worth, MP3Pro also wasn't really backwards-compatible, even though it claimed to be. In a format that didn't support the extensions, it cut off the entire high end and it sounded like absolute shit. It remains to be seen if the same issue will be seen in these surround MP3s, but if it really doesn't add too much, like the article is implying, I don't imagine it will be a cataclysmic failure.
Besides, there aren't that many surround-sound audio CDs to rip yet, so something like this wouldn't gain in popularity until a more popular codec has already superseded it. I wouldn't worry about it gaining any type of dominance.
More like Kleenex, Band-Aids and Rollerblades.
Prior art will invalidate a patent. No one needs to patent a damned thing.
Do you think your average user cares about this? Chances are he's running a pirated copy of Windows already, so he could care less whether or not it's free, and certainly won't bother to make the gratis/libre or beer/speech distinction since he simply doesn't care. What matters is the software support, and whether or not he can quickly and easily perform all of the tasks he's used to on Windows. What also matters is the hardware support, and the guarantee that the TV tuner card he just bought for $20 after rebate at Best Buy works properly with his operating system.
Of course, the issue with a lot of Linux evangelists is that they fail to realize how Windows is good enough for most people, that people are extremely stubborn, and will only change when forced to. My aunt Kathy doesn't care that Linux is made by a team of volunteers all around the world, or that Gnome and KDE offer many superior features to Windows. She cares that she can hop onto overpriced and under-featured America Online garbage and check her email. This is true of the majority of computer users, not the minority of dumb ones.
You can preach about free software all you want, but in the end, does it get the job done? And is it enough of an improvement to get people to give up what they've been using for years and learn an entirely new system?
There is absolutely no doubt that the Linux community has come a tremendous distance even in the last year or so. But we need to fucking work and work and work at improving the quality of the software, and drivers, if it's going to gain any mass-market acceptance. We're not done yet.
If Microsoft had continued to be about computing instead of marketing, we'd all be using Xenix instead of Windows.
If you need to apologize in advance for a post it may have not been a good idea in the first place. ;)
I can run a disassembler on the code and claim they released the source in 100% pure assembly as well, but that doesn't really make it so.