Yes, but AT Startup, Ubuntu does nothing. By the time you launch a routine mix of things, your memory is higher than KDE. And AT Startup, simply selecting common sense defaults in KDE will run very small memory foot print as well.
By the same token, there is hardly any place with an HOA that does not attract lawyers as residents. Having been in a few HOAs, I've found that lawyers are the least likely to adhere to the rules, and most likely to get on the governing board.
Kinda agree - my current Insignia (GM) comes to €27.000, or at current exchange rate: 35.000 USD. I could probably be talked into adding the difference up to 40K, although, as a techie on lowest salery rung, I'd be hard pressed to locate the additional 10K for this.
What matters most in a desktop environment is how fast and easy it is to use for the end user. Gnome 2 is a far more intuitive and lightweight interface than KDE.
No, its not more intuitive, and its no longer (probably never was) more lightweight.
If all you want to do is surf the web, and read email Gnome is usable. Anything more than that an you quickly realize all those options are in KDE for a reason. As for the three clicks, that only works because Gnome is so horribly limiting and constraining.
Don't get me wrong, KDE went off the deep end for three years, but its back now and better than ever. It was totally re-engineered for the future, while Gnome is struggling to hang on to the past.
I can't disagree with your take on the politics. I do take issue with the technology.
Very odd. After making that statement you go on to validate just about everything the GP said. You get modded up for starting an argument, but before you've written 2 paragraphs you've agreed with the other guy by just using different words.
Are you guys brothers? My brothers used to fight against each other on but the same side of the argument a lot too. Seems like the arguments always ended with "Ok then". To which the other replied "Fine".
It didn't cause a crash, it allowed the execution of arbitrary code, which is probably worse.
We don't even know if the exploit occurred in the windows API, or some of the crapware that Safari drags along with it. None of the other WebKit browsers can cause the same exploit so it may well not be in the core of safari at all, but rather in one of the helper drivers that get installed when you install Safari and iTunes, like Bonjour or ipod helper processes. Some of those things can't be easily sandboxed because they install as drivers.
This isn't the first instance of Safari being a vector to a windows vulnerability.
Safari is the only attack vector. This by definition is not a remote flaw as it requires you to do something to exploit a web browser, thus it is a 'local exploit'.
The web page can be remote, and can presumably gain control. You, the user, need do nothing but click a link, and might possibly be unaware that anything had happened.
Letting someone talk you into installing Safari also constitutes a Social Engineering exploit. So you might be right after all.
It seems unlikely this was found by accident, more likely by someone knowing about how the iframe would be handled in windows and designing something purpose made to break that.
Not knowing how Safari is interfacing with windows, I can't guess if this is a problem in a windows API call or some tool-set used only by Safari. If none of the other Webkit browsers can trigger this bug it would seem more likely to be some safari specific middleware.
All 6 people using Safari on Win7 64bit should definitely avoid all 3 sites on the internet that might have deployed this exploit.
Why should a music player take full screen, or waste precious screen real estate replicating what the built in file manager already provides? All of them seem to be in an arms race with itunes to have te most complex and least well behaved interface. I just want to listen, I don't ned to know every fact about the music, the album cover, or even who played drums. Its music people. Not a spreadsheet or a rocket launch. Just listen. Stop making it complex. Just listen.
What's the good, compelling reason that anyone is allowed to forfeit (or demand another party forfeit) what is otherwise a legal right? What was the justification given for considering this a legitimate part of contract law? Especially in one-sided, non-negotiable contracts of adhesion?
I was always under the impression you could not "sign away" your rights, and any contract that requires this was invalid.
Such a case came up in Washington State in 2008, and Groklaw jumped all over it due to its relation to another issue between Apple and Psystar.
AT&T's Consumer Services Agreement is substantively unconscionable and therefore unenforceable to the extent that it purports to waive the right to class actions, require confidentiality, shorten the Washington Consumer Protection Act statute of limitations, and limit availability of attorney fees.... Courts will not be easily deceived by attempts to unilaterally strip away consumer protections and remedies by efforts to cloak the waiver of important rights under an arbitration clause. The dispute resolution section is severable from the balance of the contract.
.
The case involved AT&T attempting to force consumers into arbitration and prohibit Class Action suits:
It forbids class actions and requires that all arbitrations be kept confidential. The agreement also states in relevant part that "[n]o dispute may be joined with another lawsuit, or in an arbitration with a dispute of any other person, or resolved on a class-wide basis," and "[a]ny arbitration shall remain confidential.
PJ goes on to state that some States do allow waivers of class-based relief, but such a waiver would not extinguish your individual rights.
Washington State held that the contract was entered into in Washington, and New York law be dammed, AT&T had to remove such clauses from their contract without voiding the contract. The prohibitions against joining a Class Action were not only severable, but invalid.
IANAL, so I don't know if this is directly on point or not.
It's called multitasking. Electronic devices have been doing this since the 1960s. There is absolutely nothing special here. I've been making VoIP calls on my computer since the mid 90s. Guess what? I could switch to another program without breaking the call. The fact that this all fits in my pocket now is nothing special. Oh, but this takes input from a touchscreen. I guess that's different and no one else is making those.
Ah, but your computer is not a "portable electronic device with a touch screen".
Apple patents the obvious by mentioning it in the same sentence it with their new toy.
Actually you could do this on the old Razr moto phones from the feature phone era.
I suspect Apple is hanging their hat on the phrase "portable electronic device with a touch screen display", believing that doing what had been done all along somehow becomes new and patent-able simply because you added a touch screen into the mix.
I think this gets tossed the first time they try to enforce it.
I believe it's structured as a commission-type deal, where they get a percentage of the AdWords revenue from ad-clicks on searches sent to Google by Firefox, which is a vaguely royalty-type arrangement.
I see. A stretch, in my opinion, but a convenient one for both parties.
Does MS make a royalty from a click in IE?
Does Sears make a Royalty each time I pound a nail with my Craftsman Hammer?
Its still an odd arrangement, but it prevents Google from making a purely arbitrary gift to Mozilla and allows Mozilla look like they are earning the money. Both ends may see value (tax wise) in such an arrangement. Google expenses it right off its income, Mozilla considers it earned income, and subtracts its expenses. Probably better than a philanthropic outright gift to both parties. (IANATA) (Not a tax attorney).
But because this was substantially ALL the income on that balance sheet, it still boils down to Google accounts for essentially ALL of Mozilla's funding, which means Google is directly funding the development of two Browsers at the same time. Each of which have fundamentally different cores.
Answering my own question, it looks like it does more or less come out in the reports. Here [pdf] is their financial report for 2009-2010. It reports that they earned "royalties" of $101 million in 2009 and $121 million in 2010
Its odd that this income would be lumped under royalties, because the definition of royalties usually implies the payment for the use of something owned by the payee. Such as income from book sales, etc. Mozilla also makes some income from the sale of various products on their web site, per that PDF.
But assuming you are correct, and Revenues and other support represents the bulk of their income, it would appear that Google is paying for substantially ALL of the development for TWO browsers, Chrome, and Mozilla, as well as providing code for Chromium.
They BOUGHT Siri from the company that developed it with the outrageous profit they charge for their over priced phones. There is so much open source code in Siri, its not even clear that Apple has a full title to it.
The whole point of google voice and google giving out millions of phone lines and voicemail transcription for free was so they would have the raw data they needed to improve their voice recognition technology.
Not true. Voice recognition wasn't even in their gun sights when they bought Grand Central (google voice predecessor).
Google does Google voice so that, at the mere flip of a switch they can be a "phone company" by allowing calls over your data subscription (be it wifi or 3g or LTE).
They haven't turned this on yet so as to avoid pissing off the carriers for purely business reasons, (and perhaps to avoid more regulatory oversite).
But Google knows VOIP in one form or another is where voice coms are going. Soon (any year now) the carriers will realize they are better off being just "dumb pipes" and they will embrace their fate, and stop billing for voice calls by the minute, and make money simply selling bandwidth. LTE pushes that day nearer.
At any time they want, Google can turn GV into a virtual phone company, with end-to-end TCP\IP connections (at least in North America and parts of Europe), with each user brings their own bandwidth.
That google chose to add voice recognition to Google Voice was merely a serendipitous outfall of having a tool handy. Putting out best guesses of voice transcriptions is not that helpful unless people feed back corrections, which nobody bothers to do.
You can do complicated queries all you want. My cat entertains complicated queries as well. And she achieves about the same level of useful information output.
Wolfram is utterly useless as far as I am concerned. Any question requiring integration of two distinct datasets usually results in failure.
This signifies so many of the core differences between Google and Apple. Apple intentionally implemented "attitude" in the character of Siri to make it more endearing and friendly, while Google dismisses that idea and tries to make theirs into an emotion-less Star Trek computer,
I have a Garmin. I do not need another bitch-in-a-box.
So far Apple isn't doing much to stop Google from doing this. But Apple got the first mover advantage. So Google has some serious catching up. Google is no wimp too.
I doubt Apple will even try to stop Google, because speaking to your computer is nothing either of these companies invented, and has been around in real life applications as well as in works of fictions for decades.
Several other phones have had this as well, so if anything Apple might be the one infringing here.
Far from what the carefully crafted ads you see on TV show, SIRI has some maddening limitations and usability issues. I've watched people try two or three times to get the phone do do what they want and ultimately give up and just do it manually.
Each of these wins keeps competition out of the market for a while. Most of their competitors come out with new hardware and new features much faster than Apple does. Every little delay is a win for them.
But this one won't keep any HTC phones out of the market place.
HTC can program around this prior to the effective date. The effective date is April 2012. And it only affects phones coming into the country after that date. So HTC ships its entire warehouse inventory over now, beating the injunction, then quietly slips in a few programming changes, and never misses a beat.
Remember that TMobile is a PROFITABLE company. They are actively making money. If DT would just cut them lose and give them the freedom to succeed or fail, I am willing to bet that they would do pretty well.
Profitable is an elusive beast. Its doubtful T-Mobile alone would survive.
During the first quarter of 2011, T-Mobile saw its revenue hit $4.63 billion, putting it in line with the first quarter of 2010. However, the company's profit fell over $200 million year over year from $362 million last year to $135 million in the first quarter of 2011.
They can see the writing on the wall, as their small market area makes it hard for them to compete.
In addition DT has problems elsewhere, parts of their Euro market are also tanking. In fact the German market sees to be the only place they are making a good profit margin. They were counting on the now-defunct sale as a source of income.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but AT Startup, Ubuntu does nothing. By the time you launch a routine mix of things, your memory is higher than KDE.
And AT Startup, simply selecting common sense defaults in KDE will run very small memory foot print as well.
By the same token, there is hardly any place with an HOA that does not attract lawyers as residents.
Having been in a few HOAs, I've found that lawyers are the least likely to adhere to the rules, and most
likely to get on the governing board.
Kinda agree - my current Insignia (GM) comes to €27.000, or at current exchange rate: 35.000 USD. I could probably be talked into adding the difference up to 40K, although, as a techie on lowest salery rung, I'd be hard pressed to locate the additional 10K for this.
You get that back over 5 years in fuel savings. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/savemoney.shtml
Ah, guys, this isn't legal anywhere. Can't you tell a whoosh when you hear it going over your head?
What matters most in a desktop environment is how fast and easy it is to use for the end user. Gnome 2 is a far more intuitive and lightweight interface than KDE.
No, its not more intuitive, and its no longer (probably never was) more lightweight.
If all you want to do is surf the web, and read email Gnome is usable. Anything more than that an you quickly realize all those options are in KDE for a reason. As for the three clicks, that only works because Gnome is so horribly limiting and constraining.
Don't get me wrong, KDE went off the deep end for three years, but its back now and better than ever. It was totally re-engineered for the future, while Gnome is struggling to hang on to the past.
I can't disagree with your take on the politics. I do take issue with the technology.
Very odd. After making that statement you go on to validate just about everything the GP said.
You get modded up for starting an argument, but before you've written 2 paragraphs you've agreed with the other guy by just using different words.
Are you guys brothers?
My brothers used to fight against each other on but the same side of the argument a lot too.
Seems like the arguments always ended with "Ok then". To which the other replied "Fine".
It didn't cause a crash, it allowed the execution of arbitrary code, which is probably worse.
We don't even know if the exploit occurred in the windows API, or some of the crapware that Safari drags along with it.
None of the other WebKit browsers can cause the same exploit so it may well not be in the core of safari at all, but rather in one of the helper drivers that get installed when you install Safari and iTunes, like Bonjour or ipod helper processes. Some of those things can't be easily sandboxed because they install as drivers.
This isn't the first instance of Safari being a vector to a windows vulnerability.
Safari is the only attack vector. This by definition is not a remote flaw as it requires you to do something to exploit a web browser, thus it is a 'local exploit'.
The web page can be remote, and can presumably gain control. You, the user, need do nothing but click a link, and might possibly be unaware that anything had happened.
Letting someone talk you into installing Safari also constitutes a Social Engineering exploit. So you might be right after all.
It seems unlikely this was found by accident, more likely by someone knowing about how the iframe would
be handled in windows and designing something purpose made to break that.
Not knowing how Safari is interfacing with windows, I can't guess if this is a problem in a windows API call or some tool-set used only by Safari. If none of the other Webkit browsers can trigger this bug it would seem more likely to be some safari specific middleware.
All 6 people using Safari on Win7 64bit should definitely avoid all 3 sites on the internet that might have deployed this exploit.
It's music. Just listen to it.
Sort by metadata!? That's like sorting your corn flakes by shape!
I agree, simple is better.
Why should a music player take full screen, or waste precious screen real estate replicating what the built in file manager already provides? All of them seem to be in an arms race with itunes to have te most complex and least well behaved interface. I just want to listen, I don't ned to know every fact about the music, the album cover, or even who played drums. Its music people. Not a spreadsheet or a rocket launch. Just listen. Stop making it complex. Just listen.
What's the good, compelling reason that anyone is allowed to forfeit (or demand another party forfeit) what is otherwise a legal right? What was the justification given for considering this a legitimate part of contract law? Especially in one-sided, non-negotiable contracts of adhesion?
I was always under the impression you could not "sign away" your rights, and any contract that requires this was invalid.
Such a case came up in Washington State in 2008, and Groklaw jumped all over it due to its relation to another issue between Apple and Psystar.
AT&T's Consumer Services Agreement is substantively unconscionable and therefore unenforceable to the extent that it purports to waive the right to class actions, require confidentiality, shorten the Washington Consumer Protection Act statute of limitations, and limit availability of attorney fees. ... Courts will not be easily deceived by attempts to unilaterally strip away consumer protections and remedies by efforts to cloak the waiver of important rights under an arbitration clause. The dispute resolution section is severable from the balance of the contract.
.
The case involved AT&T attempting to force consumers into arbitration and prohibit Class Action suits:
It forbids class actions and requires that all arbitrations be kept confidential. The agreement also states in relevant part that "[n]o dispute may be joined with another lawsuit, or in an arbitration with a dispute of any other person, or resolved on a class-wide basis," and "[a]ny arbitration shall remain confidential.
PJ goes on to state that some States do allow waivers of class-based relief, but such a waiver would not extinguish your individual rights.
Washington State held that the contract was entered into in Washington, and New York law be dammed, AT&T had to remove such clauses from their contract without voiding the contract. The prohibitions against joining a Class Action were not only severable, but invalid.
IANAL, so I don't know if this is directly on point or not.
It's called multitasking. Electronic devices have been doing this since the 1960s. There is absolutely nothing special here. I've been making VoIP calls on my computer since the mid 90s. Guess what? I could switch to another program without breaking the call. The fact that this all fits in my pocket now is nothing special. Oh, but this takes input from a touchscreen. I guess that's different and no one else is making those.
Ah, but your computer is not a "portable electronic device with a touch screen".
Apple patents the obvious by mentioning it in the same sentence it with their new toy.
This goes nowhere.
Actually you could do this on the old Razr moto phones from the feature phone era.
I suspect Apple is hanging their hat on the phrase "portable electronic device with a touch screen display", believing that doing what had been done all along somehow becomes new and patent-able simply because you added a touch screen into the mix.
I think this gets tossed the first time they try to enforce it.
I would be happier if Moz was far less dependent on the add-click.
Here is a way to make your self very happy: https://donate.mozilla.org/
Come on, now, that PayPal account has a few bucks you don't need for the holidays.
Money > Mouth.
I believe it's structured as a commission-type deal, where they get a percentage of the AdWords revenue from ad-clicks on searches sent to Google by Firefox, which is a vaguely royalty-type arrangement.
I see. A stretch, in my opinion, but a convenient one for both parties.
Does MS make a royalty from a click in IE?
Does Sears make a Royalty each time I pound a nail with my Craftsman Hammer?
Its still an odd arrangement, but it prevents Google from making a purely arbitrary gift to Mozilla and
allows Mozilla look like they are earning the money. Both ends may see value (tax wise) in such an
arrangement. Google expenses it right off its income, Mozilla considers it earned income, and subtracts its expenses. Probably better than a philanthropic outright gift to both parties. (IANATA) (Not a tax attorney).
But because this was substantially ALL the income on that balance sheet, it still boils down to Google accounts for essentially ALL of Mozilla's funding, which means Google is directly funding the development of two Browsers at the same time. Each of which have fundamentally different cores.
Answering my own question, it looks like it does more or less come out in the reports. Here [pdf] is their financial report for 2009-2010. It reports that they earned "royalties" of $101 million in 2009 and $121 million in 2010
Its odd that this income would be lumped under royalties, because the definition of royalties usually implies the payment for the use of something owned by the payee. Such as income from book sales, etc. Mozilla also makes some income from the sale of various products on their web site, per that PDF.
But assuming you are correct, and Revenues and other support represents the bulk of their income, it would appear that Google is paying for substantially ALL of the development for TWO browsers, Chrome, and Mozilla, as well as providing code for Chromium.
Apple didn't BEAT google to the market.
They BOUGHT Siri from the company that developed it with the outrageous profit they charge for their over priced phones.
There is so much open source code in Siri, its not even clear that Apple has a full title to it.
The whole point of google voice and google giving out millions of phone lines and voicemail transcription for free was so they would have the raw data they needed to improve their voice recognition technology.
Not true. Voice recognition wasn't even in their gun sights when they bought Grand Central (google voice predecessor).
Google does Google voice so that, at the mere flip of a switch they can be a "phone company" by allowing calls over your data subscription (be it wifi or 3g or LTE).
They haven't turned this on yet so as to avoid pissing off the carriers for purely business reasons, (and perhaps to avoid more regulatory oversite).
But Google knows VOIP in one form or another is where voice coms are going. Soon (any year now) the carriers will realize they are better off being just "dumb pipes" and they will embrace their fate, and stop billing for voice calls by the minute, and make money simply selling bandwidth. LTE pushes that day nearer.
At any time they want, Google can turn GV into a virtual phone company, with end-to-end TCP\IP connections (at least in North America and parts of Europe), with each user brings their own bandwidth.
That google chose to add voice recognition to Google Voice was merely a serendipitous outfall of having a tool handy. Putting out best guesses of voice transcriptions is not that helpful unless people feed back corrections, which nobody bothers to do.
You can do complicated queries all you want. My cat entertains complicated queries as well. And she achieves about the same level of useful information output.
Wolfram is utterly useless as far as I am concerned. Any question requiring integration of two distinct datasets usually results in failure.
This signifies so many of the core differences between Google and Apple. Apple intentionally implemented "attitude" in the character of Siri to make it more endearing and friendly, while Google dismisses that idea and tries to make theirs into an emotion-less Star Trek computer,
I have a Garmin. I do not need another bitch-in-a-box.
Give me emotionless efficiency every time.
So far Apple isn't doing much to stop Google from doing this. But Apple got the first mover advantage. So Google has some serious catching up. Google is no wimp too.
I doubt Apple will even try to stop Google, because speaking to your computer is nothing either of these companies invented, and has been around in real life applications as well as in works of fictions for decades.
My old Razr (not the smartphone) had simple voice dialing. Yes, you can still buy this phone today!
And Android has has had seemingly forever, as well as accessibility options for voice playback of messages and emails.
Several other phones have had this as well, so if anything Apple might be the one infringing here.
Far from what the carefully crafted ads you see on TV show, SIRI has some maddening limitations and usability issues. I've watched people try two or three times to get the phone do do what they want and ultimately give up and just do it manually.
Minnesota. Spell checker works for you as well as other people, and there is no penalty for using it.
HINT: You were roaming on AT&T most of the time. But happy delusion day to you.
Each of these wins keeps competition out of the market for a while. Most of their competitors come out with new hardware and new features much faster than Apple does. Every little delay is a win for them.
But this one won't keep any HTC phones out of the market place.
HTC can program around this prior to the effective date. The effective date is April 2012. And it only affects phones coming into the country after that date. So HTC ships its entire warehouse inventory over now, beating the injunction, then quietly slips in a few programming changes, and never misses a beat.
Remember that TMobile is a PROFITABLE company. They are actively making money. If DT would just cut them lose and give them the freedom to succeed or fail, I am willing to bet that they would do pretty well.
Profitable is an elusive beast. Its doubtful T-Mobile alone would survive.
During the first quarter of 2011, T-Mobile saw its revenue hit $4.63 billion, putting it in line with the first quarter of 2010. However, the company's profit fell over $200 million year over year from $362 million last year to $135 million in the first quarter of 2011.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20060353-17.html
They can see the writing on the wall, as their small market area makes it hard for them to compete.
In addition DT has problems elsewhere, parts of their Euro market are also tanking. In fact the German market sees to be the only place they are making a good profit margin. They were counting on the now-defunct sale as a source of income.