Completely off topic, but the right way to fight back would be to continue moderation and to meta-moderate whenever possible. Of course, continue to browse at -1 too and mod up anyone who you think has been unjustly modded. Opting out will not solve this problem.
Sorry for replying again but I just found out that the test itself is broken and not Firefox. The reason is given here but it appears that it now renders wrong in Opera and Safari as well.
Hmm... The test breaks and IE is suddenly compliant while previously compliant browsers are not *dons his tin foil hat*
Even in that case, Firefox 3 beta1 was compliant and there seems to be a recent regression. So we can argue that Firefox was Acid2 compliant long before IE8. What Mozilla needs to ensure is that the final version of Fx3 is Acid2 compliant (which I have no doubt will be the case for exactly the reasons you state).
It is much more important to be compliant with CSS than just passing the Acid2 test, and so I really don't pay much attention to this test at all. There are better test suites out there, for instance http://www.css3.info/selectors-test/test.html.
We need to pay less attention to passing any one test and more to standards compliance as a whole.
It may just be that the web pages you have opened are not static - that is, there may be some javascript activity going on (and this is very common especially for ads). Some flash may be getting loaded, etc. This could very legitimately be increasing your memory consumption without there being any memory leaks.
Too many of us, especially old timers, assume that web pages will not change once loaded, but that is no longer true. If you leave a web page on for 5 hours, there may be 100 different ads displayed on that page - all of which get cached and increase the memory consumption.
And the trend is towards even bigger and more complex web pages which means that even more memory will be consumed by all browsers. That said, I hope Firefox devs can fix the memory issues - that would be another vindication that the open source model really does work.
Form the tests that the developers have been running, most of the memory leaks in Firefox itself seem to be fixed (there are probably still some left). However, memory usage still remains a problem. I think this blog post summarizes their findings. They've been using dtrace and other tools to find out exactly what is going on.
Unfortunately, I think the damage to Firefox's reputation is already done. There are many people who have had negative experiences with Firefox who keep on harping about the "memory leaks" and I don't see how Mozilla devs can change this public perception.
I would advice you and anyone else who thinks big governments are good to read some Thoreau, specifically his essay Civil Disobedience. It's in the public domain even, so you can get it for free from many places.
They will still need to find a different method of producing the same drug. The original method of producing the drug is still patented, and I think you'll find that it's usually not trivial at all to find a different biochemical process to produce the same drug, especially at the limits of current technology. So there would be R&D involved, but the original company would not have a guaranteed monopoly.
The European model of only allowing the patenting of actual implementations would solve many of the current problems with the US patent system. Of course, the pharma companies would hate to see this happen and would lobby heavily against any such reforms.
Some of these countries like Brazil, China and India (off the top of my head) voted against OOXML. To me, this suggests that it was not just Microsoft that was gaming the system, but the other side as well (IBM, Sun). Or maybe there's another reason why these countries did not respond, which has nothing to do with Microsoft.
The "second" person has made some changes which make the software better and it is now the de facto standard. if the "second" person now closes the source, this leaves the "third" person stranded. Having access to the original source code does not give him much, since he would now have to reinvent the second person's changes.
I have always considered the BSD a libertarian license, in that it depends on individual goodness and doesn't try to impose any restrictions. The GPL on the other hand is more of a socialistic license in that it tries to impose the "greater good of the society" condition on downstream contributors. Which license you prefer very much depends on which philosophy you prefer.
Actually, that is one reason I don't use Opera - it has too many features. I prefer a simple browser that does what I want and nothing more. And with Firefox plugins, I get to choose what additional functionality my browser has - for instance my plugins at work are difference from my plugins at home.
Of course, I do wish Firefox would return to some of its lean and mean roots and would definitely like better concurrency support.
See, I'm not sure of that because O2k7 came out with a new default format in any case. They could have easily made this format an open one or supported ODF (yeah, in my dreams)
This vote only reinforces my belief that Microsoft went about this completely the wrong way. The way I would have approached it would have been to support ODF (with extensions would be even better from a lock-in point of view) or to really create an open documentation standard.
I don't understand why they were so paranoid about competing on features. I'm not sure they would have lost any significant market share if they had competed fairly, because the truth is that MS Office is still the best office suite available today.
I think this has been a PR disaster and has undone a lot of the good work that many MS employees have been doing (including working with OSS) lately.
I think a lot of people are getting confused between "distribution" and "licensing". You can redistribute BSD code however you want, but you cannot change the license (of that code). Even Microsoft follows this in the BSD code that they have incorporated into Windows. The Linux devs cannot suddenly relicense it without the original copyright holder's permission. The improvements alone can be GPL, but not the whole work.
The point is that the original code could have continued to be dual-licensed and then it would have helped both BSD and GPL camps. By removing the BSD license (which they may not have the rights to do - IANAL but maybe that can only be done by the original copyright holder), they have now cut off part of the community. That is not ethical, IMHO.
I'm generally a strong believer in the GPL, but in this case I find myself sympathizing with Theo. Also, even though the BSD license allows anyone to close the source, in general, the BSD developers like to have changes given back - they just don't like forcing people to give back improvements. It's like an honor system, and in this case they feel changing the license to GPL was dishonorable, especially since the Linux devs should have known better.
While it does appear that he could be wrong legally, he is quite right from an ethical perspective. There is a lot of great work being done by the BSD folks and it would be quite impolite to tell them, "Hey thanks for your code, but you won't get anything back from us". I think the right thing to do would be to continue to use the dual license for the work in question.
If you're very worried about your improvements being close-sourced, perhaps it would be better to write your driver from scratch, rather than cutting off one part of the community. A tiff between the BSD and GPL camps is the last thing we need.
While I agree that this sounds silly, do remember that it's just the stock symbol. There are many companies with silly stock symbols (GLW, T, F). I guess they feel that more people will buy their stocks if the name sounds familiar.
Only the "Windows version" requires a closed platform. You can use Mozilla on a variety of other platforms, both open and closed. This is not the same as requiring Sharepoint which only works on one platform.
There is big difference between supporting closed platforms and requiring closed platforms.
All Valve needs to do is fix the problem. In most cases, if a company distributes software without the owners permission, there would be a lawsuit, followed by money changing hands. In this case, all we have so far is a few forum posts.
All Valve needs to do do to fix the problem (like so many other companies have done before) is to obey the GPL requirements, nothing else. I don't see how this can be worse than the threat of lawsuits and other stuff that normally happens. So please chill!
I think he's trying to say that 'high art' is basically a reflection of the artists mindset (at that point in time). Hence Romeo and Juliet gives us an insight about Shakespeare which is separate from the story itself. This insight can be derived from analyzing Shakespeare's handling of difference situations throughout his plays.
Since games is far more participative and depend on the player to interpret them, we don't get as much a sense of the artist's mindset as that of the gamer. Since the artist's message is diluted, he claims that games are not 'high art'.
I agree with him to a certain extent, since most games do not give the gamer any insight into the artist's mind(s). But there are definitely games which even while being non-linear and participative, convey a strong 'impression' of what the artist wants you to feel (an example would be System Shock).
So I think I understand where he is coming from, but I feel he just needs to look at the right games - just as he needs to look at the right movies (most movies aren't high art, either by his definition).
Ah! but with software you can have stuff that is trade secret (closed source), copyrighted (if it's a trade secret then what exactly is being copyrighted - the binary form?), patented (the idea is patented and not the code itself) and even trademarked (like Windows).
What matters is not really his personal life, but that he was a hypocrite. On one hand he visited prostitutes and on the other, he championed the cause of many "family"-oriented laws. It shows him as a basically dishonest person, and that's what bothers people (including me).
Slashdot Mirror
Completely off topic, but the right way to fight back would be to continue moderation and to meta-moderate whenever possible. Of course, continue to browse at -1 too and mod up anyone who you think has been unjustly modded. Opting out will not solve this problem.
Mod parent up. This is exactly what the fault is. Firefox needs to present the details better, that's all.
Sorry for replying again but I just found out that the test itself is broken and not Firefox. The reason is given here but it appears that it now renders wrong in Opera and Safari as well.
Hmm... The test breaks and IE is suddenly compliant while previously compliant browsers are not *dons his tin foil hat*
Even in that case, Firefox 3 beta1 was compliant and there seems to be a recent regression. So we can argue that Firefox was Acid2 compliant long before IE8. What Mozilla needs to ensure is that the final version of Fx3 is Acid2 compliant (which I have no doubt will be the case for exactly the reasons you state).
It is much more important to be compliant with CSS than just passing the Acid2 test, and so I really don't pay much attention to this test at all. There are better test suites out there, for instance http://www.css3.info/selectors-test/test.html.
We need to pay less attention to passing any one test and more to standards compliance as a whole.
It may just be that the web pages you have opened are not static - that is, there may be some javascript activity going on (and this is very common especially for ads). Some flash may be getting loaded, etc. This could very legitimately be increasing your memory consumption without there being any memory leaks.
Too many of us, especially old timers, assume that web pages will not change once loaded, but that is no longer true. If you leave a web page on for 5 hours, there may be 100 different ads displayed on that page - all of which get cached and increase the memory consumption.
And the trend is towards even bigger and more complex web pages which means that even more memory will be consumed by all browsers. That said, I hope Firefox devs can fix the memory issues - that would be another vindication that the open source model really does work.
Form the tests that the developers have been running, most of the memory leaks in Firefox itself seem to be fixed (there are probably still some left). However, memory usage still remains a problem. I think this blog post summarizes their findings. They've been using dtrace and other tools to find out exactly what is going on.
Unfortunately, I think the damage to Firefox's reputation is already done. There are many people who have had negative experiences with Firefox who keep on harping about the "memory leaks" and I don't see how Mozilla devs can change this public perception.
I would advice you and anyone else who thinks big governments are good to read some Thoreau, specifically his essay Civil Disobedience. It's in the public domain even, so you can get it for free from many places.
They will still need to find a different method of producing the same drug. The original method of producing the drug is still patented, and I think you'll find that it's usually not trivial at all to find a different biochemical process to produce the same drug, especially at the limits of current technology. So there would be R&D involved, but the original company would not have a guaranteed monopoly.
The European model of only allowing the patenting of actual implementations would solve many of the current problems with the US patent system. Of course, the pharma companies would hate to see this happen and would lobby heavily against any such reforms.
Some of these countries like Brazil, China and India (off the top of my head) voted against OOXML. To me, this suggests that it was not just Microsoft that was gaming the system, but the other side as well (IBM, Sun). Or maybe there's another reason why these countries did not respond, which has nothing to do with Microsoft.
The "second" person has made some changes which make the software better and it is now the de facto standard. if the "second" person now closes the source, this leaves the "third" person stranded. Having access to the original source code does not give him much, since he would now have to reinvent the second person's changes.
I have always considered the BSD a libertarian license, in that it depends on individual goodness and doesn't try to impose any restrictions. The GPL on the other hand is more of a socialistic license in that it tries to impose the "greater good of the society" condition on downstream contributors. Which license you prefer very much depends on which philosophy you prefer.
Actually, that is one reason I don't use Opera - it has too many features. I prefer a simple browser that does what I want and nothing more. And with Firefox plugins, I get to choose what additional functionality my browser has - for instance my plugins at work are difference from my plugins at home.
Of course, I do wish Firefox would return to some of its lean and mean roots and would definitely like better concurrency support.
I agree, and I'm hoping the OpenOffice developers (and KOffice, etc.) realize this too. We really need a good open source Excel replacement.
See, I'm not sure of that because O2k7 came out with a new default format in any case. They could have easily made this format an open one or supported ODF (yeah, in my dreams)
This vote only reinforces my belief that Microsoft went about this completely the wrong way. The way I would have approached it would have been to support ODF (with extensions would be even better from a lock-in point of view) or to really create an open documentation standard.
I don't understand why they were so paranoid about competing on features. I'm not sure they would have lost any significant market share if they had competed fairly, because the truth is that MS Office is still the best office suite available today.
I think this has been a PR disaster and has undone a lot of the good work that many MS employees have been doing (including working with OSS) lately.
I think a lot of people are getting confused between "distribution" and "licensing". You can redistribute BSD code however you want, but you cannot change the license (of that code). Even Microsoft follows this in the BSD code that they have incorporated into Windows. The Linux devs cannot suddenly relicense it without the original copyright holder's permission. The improvements alone can be GPL, but not the whole work.
The point is that the original code could have continued to be dual-licensed and then it would have helped both BSD and GPL camps. By removing the BSD license (which they may not have the rights to do - IANAL but maybe that can only be done by the original copyright holder), they have now cut off part of the community. That is not ethical, IMHO.
I'm generally a strong believer in the GPL, but in this case I find myself sympathizing with Theo. Also, even though the BSD license allows anyone to close the source, in general, the BSD developers like to have changes given back - they just don't like forcing people to give back improvements. It's like an honor system, and in this case they feel changing the license to GPL was dishonorable, especially since the Linux devs should have known better.
While it does appear that he could be wrong legally, he is quite right from an ethical perspective. There is a lot of great work being done by the BSD folks and it would be quite impolite to tell them, "Hey thanks for your code, but you won't get anything back from us". I think the right thing to do would be to continue to use the dual license for the work in question.
If you're very worried about your improvements being close-sourced, perhaps it would be better to write your driver from scratch, rather than cutting off one part of the community. A tiff between the BSD and GPL camps is the last thing we need.
While I agree that this sounds silly, do remember that it's just the stock symbol. There are many companies with silly stock symbols (GLW, T, F). I guess they feel that more people will buy their stocks if the name sounds familiar.
Basically, nothing to see here.
Only the "Windows version" requires a closed platform. You can use Mozilla on a variety of other platforms, both open and closed. This is not the same as requiring Sharepoint which only works on one platform.
There is big difference between supporting closed platforms and requiring closed platforms.
All Valve needs to do is fix the problem. In most cases, if a company distributes software without the owners permission, there would be a lawsuit, followed by money changing hands. In this case, all we have so far is a few forum posts.
All Valve needs to do do to fix the problem (like so many other companies have done before) is to obey the GPL requirements, nothing else. I don't see how this can be worse than the threat of lawsuits and other stuff that normally happens. So please chill!
I think he's trying to say that 'high art' is basically a reflection of the artists mindset (at that point in time). Hence Romeo and Juliet gives us an insight about Shakespeare which is separate from the story itself. This insight can be derived from analyzing Shakespeare's handling of difference situations throughout his plays.
Since games is far more participative and depend on the player to interpret them, we don't get as much a sense of the artist's mindset as that of the gamer. Since the artist's message is diluted, he claims that games are not 'high art'.
I agree with him to a certain extent, since most games do not give the gamer any insight into the artist's mind(s). But there are definitely games which even while being non-linear and participative, convey a strong 'impression' of what the artist wants you to feel (an example would be System Shock).
So I think I understand where he is coming from, but I feel he just needs to look at the right games - just as he needs to look at the right movies (most movies aren't high art, either by his definition).
Ah! but with software you can have stuff that is trade secret (closed source), copyrighted (if it's a trade secret then what exactly is being copyrighted - the binary form?), patented (the idea is patented and not the code itself) and even trademarked (like Windows).
So it's not quite so cut and dried.
I suggest you take a look at java.util.concurrent.* library to give you an idea how easy it is to use concurrent programming in Java.
What matters is not really his personal life, but that he was a hypocrite. On one hand he visited prostitutes and on the other, he championed the cause of many "family"-oriented laws. It shows him as a basically dishonest person, and that's what bothers people (including me).