The blog is basing their assertions based on the publicly available logs of a conversation between the guy that "makes" Iron and the Chromium developers. Whether it's a scam or not, I dunno. But it's undeniable that the Iron guy only made it so that he could pick up a few bucks from Adsense for doing nothing.
You haven't acknowledged that there may be many more changes in the 11 full versions since this report.
It isn't nothing. He gave me exactly the behavior I desired. No call homes, no background services, portable isolated install. + built in add blocker and editable user agent changes.
The changes may be minor, but they are effective and it is why Iron is on my system and Chrome is NOT.
It isn't a scam to make minor changes and provide an alternate build people want for FREE!
Just because there were only minor changes, doesn't make it a scam.
Second point:
This is based on some blog back when it was based on vers 5 of chrome sources. It is currently based on vers 16.. This is wildly out of date.
I use Iron Portable ver 16 as a backup browser and it does exactly what it should. Installs nothing in your system, except in the install directory, doesn't call home like Googles version and is a perfectly good alternative browser.
It is not a scam, because some outdated blog says so.
We are LONG overdue for America to implement a scaled tariff. Basically, These are tariffs that target nations that we have large deficits with, but in particular, those that manipulate their money and markets against us:
So, for our top 20 nations that we trade with, this would punish the following:
China - 36%
The US is not going to do anything to upset China, the US are completely dependent on China for financing and manufacturing for just about every "American" company.
Quick, name one non-US based tech company started in the past 10 years with at least 500 employees.
Can you think of one? I can't.
Now let's try US tech companies. Since 2001 right off the top of my head there are Facebook and Twitter. I think Youtube was also in that timeframe, but they're kind of gray area since Google bought them before they got really massive.
Sinoval Wind systems group (China ) founded 2005, one of the top 5 wind turbine producers in the world. >1000 employees.
Quick name one US based technology company started in the past 10 years, with at least 500 employees, that actually manufacturers something.
Twitter and Facebook aren't going to save the US economy.
This isn't just Apple, it is every manufacturer of almost everything you own.
There is an excellent documentary called "China Blue" that follows a young girl from her village, to a work dormitory producing jeans. http://video.pbs.org/video/1488092077/
In a world of economic, regulatory and political disparity, this is what Global Capitalism generates. The locations willing to offer the lowest wages and the least protection to workers, get the work.
It the the golden times, from the late 1940's into the 1950's America enjoyed a massive competitive head start with most of the rest of the world being bombed into oblivion, and needing to rebuild. This was sustained for some time longer by staying ahead of the technology curve, and only outsourcing lower tech commodity work.
But the world has shifted. There will be no golden times for the USA in our lifetimes. Our competition is no longer recovering, we are no longer ahead of the technology curve. We outsourced the technology and the engineering. It doesn't take long for our contractors to become our competition when they are the ones designing to hardware and software anyway. Did we think them reliant on our brilliant executive management?
People can point fingers at "evil" right wing politicians, "evil" left wing politicians, "evil" corporations or "evil" unions. But in the end, that is trivia to occupy us while Rome burns.
We are in a race to the bottom and it has significant momentum, so you better get used to it.
I disabled every data gathering option I could find in Chrome and it still was trying to get at the internet on it's own.
I never saw Iron do any such thing. Also your "analysis" is ancient and out of date, based on Chrome 5 source, Iron now uses Chrome 16 mainline source.
Actually I do have this on my system. I just didn't think it was worth mentioning because it is kind of niche.
But just not calling home isn't enough to get me using any Chrome variant. It still isn't as configuration friendly, and still doesn't have the level of extensions available for FF.
Also every version Chrome sourced browser has that annoying white flash when looking at some dark web pages like this one:
Black background and when you click on messages in the forum, Chrome produces an annoying white screen flash (known bug there for years now) that I don't get in FF.
For regular browsing I believe you're right. However, there are a couple of Google spreadsheets I use (I didn't create them) that are painfully slow under Firefox but just awfully slow under Chrome. So speed does matter for more than just benchmarks, but not necessarily for regular browsing. Note that this is on a self-built desktop gaming system that's less than a year old, so it's not like I'm comparing this on my dual-core netbook.
I use FF because it is much more configurable (about:config has entries for more than any other browser), it also has more plug ins, and those plug ins it does have tend to be more effective for just about everything.
I also don't like Google Chrome calling home all the time (uninstalled). I also have IE9 and Opera installed.
Speed issues are moot outside of benchmarks these days (unless you are running IE7 on a netbook). IMO it is pure placebo effect to say one browser is faster than another in regular browsing on a modern computer.
Apple could drop the price $50 and still make money, but why would they? Apple only sells products where it can make a good margin. That also would do little to close the gap on a $200 subsidized tablet.
Not much why there. It looks more like rationalizing beating this dead horse showing 288 line analog VHS upconvert in a movie theater. Showing it in the theater gets more buzz (witness stories like this) for further monetizing it.
I just wish there were stories that put his innovation into perspective: he didn't do anything other than latch onto others creations and sell it.
Read the Biography. Jobs was much more than a salesman. He was intimately involved with the design of products from the Mac forward. Starting with the Mac he was constantly insisting on changes to the radius of curves in the plastic, he made so many suggestions about the design of the Mac Calculator that the engineer wrote a Calculator Construction kit, so Jobs could tweak the design until it was just right (which he did and this was the calculator for the next decade).
These are just a couple of anecdotes, and there are many out there, but it isn't the anecdotes that bring this home. You really need to read the biography to really understand the bigger picture of Steve Jobs.
Calling him just a salesman, is pure ignorance in action. Jobs was more intimately involved in product design than any CEO of his generation.
I, too, agree that Samsung (and others) are copying Apple in some ways more than others.
The questions are...
1. Is that a bad thing? For the end-users, I would say it isn't.
For Apple, I would say it isn't either. Nobody's going to walk around with Device X that may look like e.g. an iPhone and claim it's an iPhone - that would just make them posers. Without the claim, if you were to see such a Device X and think "ooh! iPhone sure seems popular!", I can't see how that would hurt Apple either, except from the anti-popular-things crowd.
I would say it most definitely is a bad thing when someone clones your years worth of work right down to the packaging. This is exactly why we have patent/copyright laws, to protect and reward years of R&D efforts that go into design with a limited monopoly.
This isn't like patent troll with vague/broad patents scribbled out in an afternoon, in hopes of hitting a jackpot.
This is is years of real product design, blatantly ripped off. This is exactly where the patent/copyright system should show it's value.
A U.S. Embassy cable written in April 2009 describes a meeting between Zoe Addington, director of policy for then industry minister Clement, and U.S. officials.
“In contrast to the messages from other Canadian officials, she said that if Canada is elevated to the Special 301 Priority Watch List (PWL), it would not hamper — and might even help — the (government of Canada's) ability to enact copyright legislation,” the cable says.
Days later, Canada was elevated on the piracy watch list.
Greedo seems to be the poster child for complaints, but the Original Star Wars (1977) is ruined pretty much start to finish for me. There is so much ridiculously out of place tacked on CGI it makes me gag.
IMO, what was done to the the original 1977 Star Wars, is as bad as taking "Jason and the Argonauts" and replacing the stop motion work of Ray Harryhausen, with CGI.
He has taken a historically significant special effects movie and added a bunch of lame CGI on top and turned it into a running joke.
For myself, I am only interested in having even a decent DVD copy of just the original 1977 movie (the old DVD box set version is not DVD quality).
I have no interest in anything else Lucas has done.
Until there was pressure from iOS and Android, both RIM and MS treated their mobile devs like crap. Which I find confusing, 'cos Apple also treats their iOS devs like crap (not much different from the way they treat their users, come to think of it:-)), but it seems that Apple is better at creating Stockholm Syndrome than RIM was.
Are you so blinded by fanboyism that you cannot even read? I wrote four very long sentences, of which three called SS on companies in addition to Apple, and of which one called SS on Apple.
You are doing a very good job of displaying that particular mental disorder, especially by reading things that aren't there. I called SS on many companies, not just Apple, but OH NOES!!!! HE CALLED APPLE BAD THINGS!!!
Point made indeed, and you are the one who made it. I called SS on a bunch of whiny losers, and you show up to provide evidence of them.
I was accurate. You did not say anyone else treats their users like crap. Just Apple. You did say Apple was the best at creating Stockholm Syndrome. Just pointing this out and you let fly with more insults. Classy.
Regardless of which group of users you are insulting with claims that they suffer from Stockholm Syndrome, it is still an insult. I don't care who you are targeting. I mention Apple specifically, because you went farther with them, than the others.
In your last line you make it crystal clear you are insulting the users of these products, calling them whiny losers, further supporting my point.
I have never owned an Apple product in my life (nor RIM, nor any smartphone of any variety). So it isn't that I take your insult personally, just that after a while is tiresome that some people who clearly don't understand what makes good products, or why certain products sell, in the end fall back to calling the people who buy them losers, because they simply don't get it.
I don't use any of these products, but I also understand why RIM sold well, why Android phones sell well, and why iPhones sell well. It has nothing to do with the users being losers(or SS sufferers), it has to do with the product being particularly good at something when they sell well. Thoughtful analysis would come from figuring out what they do better and not from claiming end users have mental disorders.
These kind of childish insults of the users of any product is what lowers/. discussions to the level of dig.
You said Apple treats it Devs/Users like crap and is better at creating Stockholm Syndrome than anyone else. You also didn't say anyone else treats their users like crap. Just Apple. There was no actual content to the criticism. Just "treats like crap" and imply they only like them because of some kind of mental disorder (AKA Stockholm Syndrome). This is essentially no better than calling buyers iSheep or various other insults aimed at buyers.
That you are now modded up for this, is a sign that/. is becoming more like dig.
Your point about fanboy modding is now validated, not by you being modded down for an insult that you complained about, which is valid regardless of who the target is, but for being modded up for insults. Now that is fanboy modding.
Congratulations. Point made, just not for the reason you intended.
Slashdot Mirror
The blog is basing their assertions based on the publicly available logs of a conversation between the guy that "makes" Iron and the Chromium developers. Whether it's a scam or not, I dunno. But it's undeniable that the Iron guy only made it so that he could pick up a few bucks from Adsense for doing nothing.
You haven't acknowledged that there may be many more changes in the 11 full versions since this report.
It isn't nothing. He gave me exactly the behavior I desired. No call homes, no background services, portable isolated install. + built in add blocker and editable user agent changes.
The changes may be minor, but they are effective and it is why Iron is on my system and Chrome is NOT.
It isn't a scam to make minor changes and provide an alternate build people want for FREE!
First point:
Just because there were only minor changes, doesn't make it a scam.
Second point:
This is based on some blog back when it was based on vers 5 of chrome sources. It is currently based on vers 16.. This is wildly out of date.
I use Iron Portable ver 16 as a backup browser and it does exactly what it should. Installs nothing in your system, except in the install directory, doesn't call home like Googles version and is a perfectly good alternative browser.
It is not a scam, because some outdated blog says so.
We are LONG overdue for America to implement a scaled tariff. Basically,
These are tariffs that target nations that we have large deficits with, but in particular, those that manipulate their money and markets against us:
So, for our top 20 nations that we trade with, this would punish the following:
The US is not going to do anything to upset China, the US are completely dependent on China for financing and manufacturing for just about every "American" company.
Wah wah wah.
Quick, name one non-US based tech company started in the past 10 years with at least 500 employees.
Can you think of one? I can't.
Now let's try US tech companies. Since 2001 right off the top of my head there are Facebook and Twitter. I think Youtube was also in that timeframe, but they're kind of gray area since Google bought them before they got really massive.
Sinoval Wind systems group (China ) founded 2005, one of the top 5 wind turbine producers in the world. >1000 employees.
Quick name one US based technology company started in the past 10 years, with at least 500 employees, that actually manufacturers something.
Twitter and Facebook aren't going to save the US economy.
This isn't just Apple, it is every manufacturer of almost everything you own.
There is an excellent documentary called "China Blue" that follows a young girl from her village, to a work dormitory producing jeans.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1488092077/
In a world of economic, regulatory and political disparity, this is what Global Capitalism generates. The locations willing to offer the lowest wages and the least protection to workers, get the work.
It the the golden times, from the late 1940's into the 1950's America enjoyed a massive competitive head start with most of the rest of the world being bombed into oblivion, and needing to rebuild. This was sustained for some time longer by staying ahead of the technology curve, and only outsourcing lower tech commodity work.
But the world has shifted. There will be no golden times for the USA in our lifetimes. Our competition is no longer recovering, we are no longer ahead of the technology curve. We outsourced the technology and the engineering. It doesn't take long for our contractors to become our competition when they are the ones designing to hardware and software anyway. Did we think them reliant on our brilliant executive management?
People can point fingers at "evil" right wing politicians, "evil" left wing politicians, "evil" corporations or "evil" unions. But in the end, that is trivia to occupy us while Rome burns.
We are in a race to the bottom and it has significant momentum, so you better get used to it.
Agree. I would rather be a slave to the land, than a slave to the man.
I disabled every data gathering option I could find in Chrome and it still was trying to get at the internet on it's own.
I never saw Iron do any such thing. Also your "analysis" is ancient and out of date, based on Chrome 5 source, Iron now uses Chrome 16 mainline source.
Actually I do have this on my system. I just didn't think it was worth mentioning because it is kind of niche.
But just not calling home isn't enough to get me using any Chrome variant. It still isn't as configuration friendly, and still doesn't have the level of extensions available for FF.
Also every version Chrome sourced browser has that annoying white flash when looking at some dark web pages like this one:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/
Black background and when you click on messages in the forum, Chrome produces an annoying white screen flash (known bug there for years now) that I don't get in FF.
For regular browsing I believe you're right. However, there are a couple of Google spreadsheets I use (I didn't create them) that are painfully slow under Firefox but just awfully slow under Chrome. So speed does matter for more than just benchmarks, but not necessarily for regular browsing. Note that this is on a self-built desktop gaming system that's less than a year old, so it's not like I'm comparing this on my dual-core netbook.
Link?
Also is it open? I wonder if the result would be the same if it were loaded in Zoho sheet:
https://sheet.zoho.com/login.do?serviceurl=%2Fhome.do
It seems that Google probably made more optimization efforts for Chrome than Firefox.
I use FF because it is much more configurable (about:config has entries for more than any other browser), it also has more plug ins, and those plug ins it does have tend to be more effective for just about everything.
I also don't like Google Chrome calling home all the time (uninstalled). I also have IE9 and Opera installed.
Speed issues are moot outside of benchmarks these days (unless you are running IE7 on a netbook). IMO it is pure placebo effect to say one browser is faster than another in regular browsing on a modern computer.
Digitimes makes up rumors, and they are fairly bad at it.
So bad at it, that digitimes piling on this rumor is more a sign that it won't be happening. ;)
Fire is below margin according to most reports.
Apple could drop the price $50 and still make money, but why would they? Apple only sells products where it can make a good margin. That also would do little to close the gap on a $200 subsidized tablet.
A 7" iPad would cost about $400.
The Fire is cheap because it is essentially a subsidized POS terminal for Amazon store.
Apple is not going to follow that model.
I have no problem with finger friendly GUIs on tablets/phones where they belong.
But just like Mouse interfaces suck with fingers, Finger GUIs suck with mouse.
Keep stupid fat finger interfaces off my desktop.
Not much why there. It looks more like rationalizing beating this dead horse showing 288 line analog VHS upconvert in a movie theater. Showing it in the theater gets more buzz (witness stories like this) for further monetizing it.
I find it quite distasteful.
I just wish there were stories that put his innovation into perspective: he didn't do anything other than latch onto others creations and sell it.
Read the Biography. Jobs was much more than a salesman. He was intimately involved with the design of products from the Mac forward. Starting with the Mac he was constantly insisting on changes to the radius of curves in the plastic, he made so many suggestions about the design of the Mac Calculator that the engineer wrote a Calculator Construction kit, so Jobs could tweak the design until it was just right (which he did and this was the calculator for the next decade).
These are just a couple of anecdotes, and there are many out there, but it isn't the anecdotes that bring this home. You really need to read the biography to really understand the bigger picture of Steve Jobs.
Calling him just a salesman, is pure ignorance in action. Jobs was more intimately involved in product design than any CEO of his generation.
I, too, agree that Samsung (and others) are copying Apple in some ways more than others.
The questions are...
1. Is that a bad thing?
For the end-users, I would say it isn't.
For Apple, I would say it isn't either. Nobody's going to walk around with Device X that may look like e.g. an iPhone and claim it's an iPhone - that would just make them posers.
Without the claim, if you were to see such a Device X and think "ooh! iPhone sure seems popular!", I can't see how that would hurt Apple either, except from the anti-popular-things crowd.
I would say it most definitely is a bad thing when someone clones your years worth of work right down to the packaging. This is exactly why we have patent/copyright laws, to protect and reward years of R&D efforts that go into design with a limited monopoly.
This isn't like patent troll with vague/broad patents scribbled out in an afternoon, in hopes of hitting a jackpot.
This is is years of real product design, blatantly ripped off. This is exactly where the patent/copyright system should show it's value.
Everyone is going to the kneejerk, you can't (or shouldn't) patent the basic shape of a tablet.
That isn't what is going on.
Samsung clearly set out to completely clone Apples products, HW, Interface and even the packaging.
In this case, I do agree that Samsung crossed a line.
After using an iPad2, that thing is monstrously heavy, and I could find no comfortable way to hold it.
What? It weighs much less than Hardcover Harry Potter books that I saw ten year old girls lugging around, when they just came out.
Are you weaker than a 10 year old girl?
I use this:
http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/
Here is my Win7 Start menu:
http://imageshack.us/f/801/startmenu7.jpg/
$655 each?? That is more than a 3G iPad at retail.
You would think with a volume of 30 Million+, you could get a a big volume discount.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1048993--leaks-show-u-s-swayed-canada-on-copyright-bill?bn=1
A U.S. Embassy cable written in April 2009 describes a meeting between
Zoe Addington, director of policy for then industry minister Clement,
and U.S. officials.
“In contrast to the messages from other Canadian officials, she said
that if Canada is elevated to the Special 301 Priority Watch List
(PWL), it would not hamper — and might even help — the (government of
Canada's) ability to enact copyright legislation,” the cable says.
Days later, Canada was elevated on the piracy watch list.
Greedo seems to be the poster child for complaints, but the Original Star Wars (1977) is ruined pretty much start to finish for me. There is so much ridiculously out of place tacked on CGI it makes me gag.
IMO, what was done to the the original 1977 Star Wars, is as bad as taking "Jason and the Argonauts" and replacing the stop motion work of Ray Harryhausen, with CGI.
He has taken a historically significant special effects movie and added a bunch of lame CGI on top and turned it into a running joke.
For myself, I am only interested in having even a decent DVD copy of just the original 1977 movie (the old DVD box set version is not DVD quality).
I have no interest in anything else Lucas has done.
Until there was pressure from iOS and Android, both RIM and MS treated their mobile devs like crap. Which I find confusing, 'cos Apple also treats their iOS devs like crap (not much different from the way they treat their users, come to think of it :-)), but it seems that Apple is better at creating Stockholm Syndrome than RIM was.
Are you so blinded by fanboyism that you cannot even read? I wrote four very long sentences, of which three called SS on companies in addition to Apple, and of which one called SS on Apple.
You are doing a very good job of displaying that particular mental disorder, especially by reading things that aren't there. I called SS on many companies, not just Apple, but OH NOES!!!! HE CALLED APPLE BAD THINGS!!!
Point made indeed, and you are the one who made it. I called SS on a bunch of whiny losers, and you show up to provide evidence of them.
I was accurate. You did not say anyone else treats their users like crap. Just Apple. You did say Apple was the best at creating Stockholm Syndrome. Just pointing this out and you let fly with more insults. Classy.
Regardless of which group of users you are insulting with claims that they suffer from Stockholm Syndrome, it is still an insult. I don't care who you are targeting. I mention Apple specifically, because you went farther with them, than the others.
In your last line you make it crystal clear you are insulting the users of these products, calling them whiny losers, further supporting my point.
I have never owned an Apple product in my life (nor RIM, nor any smartphone of any variety). So it isn't that I take your insult personally, just that after a while is tiresome that some people who clearly don't understand what makes good products, or why certain products sell, in the end fall back to calling the people who buy them losers, because they simply don't get it.
I don't use any of these products, but I also understand why RIM sold well, why Android phones sell well, and why iPhones sell well. It has nothing to do with the users being losers(or SS sufferers), it has to do with the product being particularly good at something when they sell well. Thoughtful analysis would come from figuring out what they do better and not from claiming end users have mental disorders.
These kind of childish insults of the users of any product is what lowers /. discussions to the level of dig.
You said Apple treats it Devs/Users like crap and is better at creating Stockholm Syndrome than anyone else. You also didn't say anyone else treats their users like crap. Just Apple. There was no actual content to the criticism. Just "treats like crap" and imply they only like them because of some kind of mental disorder (AKA Stockholm Syndrome). This is essentially no better than calling buyers iSheep or various other insults aimed at buyers.
That you are now modded up for this, is a sign that /. is becoming more like dig.
Your point about fanboy modding is now validated, not by you being modded down for an insult that you complained about, which is valid regardless of who the target is, but for being modded up for insults. Now that is fanboy modding.
Congratulations. Point made, just not for the reason you intended.