But you can't make tabs behave like in Ff/Camino/Safari. Or can you?
Yep you can. Checkout these custom buttons, specifically "Close current page & switch to previous one".
Drag it to a toolbar or click it to have it installed into your toolbar customisation pallete under "My Buttons". If you disable "Show close button on each tab" in General (Tools -> Preferences) then you'll end up with behaviour identical to Firefox.
Opera 8/9 has *much* *much* fewer settings compared to Firefox.
This isn't true, they're just harder to find. Opera has quite a tradition of INI editing and subtlety when it comes to options and functionality.
Try about:config in Firefox for once. That what I call "complete customization".
I've tried using FF's about:config (or any XUL app) on a Pentium II and got very frustrated. I think Opera's current webpage implementation is just more elegant, but I guess that is a matter of personal preference.
Here is my configuration. It's Opera 9.0 TP2, with just a few mods. I use the Breeze Simplified skin. I disabled the sidebar _toggle_ (A thin strip down the left hand side, but F4 toggles the sidebar anyway so I don't use it). The actual sidebar is hidden by default. I've added everything you see to the status bar too, none of it lost me any pixelage (I think this is a great example of how customizable Opera is).
I don't see how anyone can say the Opera UI is not very customizable unless they haven't spent half an hour playing around with it. On the other hand after months of use I still find new ways of doing things occasionally. To the right you can see is how I prefer my Fox, the two browsers are pretty much on par with each other in terms of screen real estate.
As you can see from task manager though, Opera' virtual and peak memory footprint is _larger_ than Firefox, I made comment on this yesterday
Part of the solution to this of course IMO is getting good DRM _content_ out there in the mainstream, and eventually people will get used to, and accept it. Sure it'll make piracy somewhat easier but i don't think, personally, it'd increase the volumne of pirated material.
This doesn't necessarily hold water. You can't stop someone from filming the big screen while at the cinema if they happen to have super high resolution covert cameras embedded in their skull either. People still get away with filming in the cinema (with popcorn box camcorders) even though they're supposed to be being watched by cinema staff. How is this different from circumventing hardware or even just software enforced DRM watchguards?
Two differences: 1) The chance you'll get caught and punished (e.g. fined for stealing cable tv, banned from the cinema), i.e. some alarm system that calls the cops on you. 2) As I said in sibling post, DRM makes people want to keep the file because they've already put in the 'effort' to get it and feel subtley cheated that such a blatant slap on the wrist has been brought down upon them.
Filtering the email is usually more effective because the mail itself follows more determinate patterns, such as key words, obfuscation, originating IP's, fake headers and malformed HTML whereas most of these 'companies' operate from shadey websites that move around alot that are hard and expensive to trace and punish. It's also difficult to prove they had a any direct involvement with the spamming.
In addition and for completeness, I don't use the standard Firefox theme (I use Littlefox, Breeze or any other nice 'Compact' themes going) and have only the "Tab X" (adds an x to all your tabs like in Opera) and FasterFox (tweaks rendering settings) extensions installed. Although i'm not claiming this is the reason I get low memory usage, it probably helps a bit (lack of huge # of extensions and graphics).
IMHO it seems to vary alot from system to system on how well that naughty fox behaves.
I've actually found the latest Firefox (v1.5.0.1) to be very very gentle with my memory. After opening BBC News, Slashdot, Digg, MSN.com and Google in tabs both FF and Opera 9 TP2 I've found that FF uses approximately 35MB in RAM and 35MB 'VM size' compared to about 40-55MB in RAM for Opera and 70MB 'VM size'.
I couldn't believe it (I am a die hard Opera 'fanboy', although all things said Opera still wins hands down in terms of rendering performance, application startup time and general UI responsiveness).
One interesting observation, by default* Firefox doesn't swap out to memory to disk when you minimise the window, unlike Opera where doing so will reduce the RAM usage to something like 4-8 MB ('VM size' remains unchanged). Interestingly this doesn't return to the full amount when maximised again until you've 'visited' all the tabs and done some navigation.
This is my experience on WinXP, I haven't had any issues with multi-100MB usage since the release of FF 1.5.
* It's worth noting that you can enable memory clipping on minimise in Firefox. Someone can google it if they care.
Copying a DVD someone lent to you still takes some modest effort (time to rip and re-encode and/or burn, cost in media/hard drive space) and after you've watched it on a TV (which is something you'll most likely be doing) the thought of copying it usually goes out of mind or doesn't occur.
An encrypted video file that becomes useless after X hours on the other hand is going to annoy you because the 'cost' of having it (hard disk space and the time and bandwidth it took you to download) has already been 'paid'.
IMO it comes down to whether the annoyances of copying a digital format come before or after the enjoyment of watching the movie whether you're likely to copy a movie illegally. Most household piracy is casual in nature and just a result of wanting to hoard things not screw someone out of royalties because you're too cheap or lazy to actually buy your own copy.
So I suppose to port the idea of lending or sharing a book or movie to a friend you would have to have it so your copy is disabled for a period of time whilst their copy in unlocked. Sort of like giving your friends access to a user/pass restricted website which is restricted to the visitors IP address for a fixed period of time after you login.
If such a DRM scheme was possible without tamper we would indeed have the perfect 'sharing' mechanism.
IRC servers form a tree like structure, on most networks there is no SINGLE machine which can log all conversations on said network. Each branch can function independently if need be. The same goes for IM like MSN and Yahoo I suspect, although IRC servers are run by lots of different admins working in colaboration, not giant corporations.
IRC is more transparent in that you can choose which server to which to connect and easily run a LINKS command to see the network structure and there are more tangible admins to talk to. On top of this direct client-client communication (DCC) has been apart of IRC for a long time for both files AND chat.
IMO IRC is the most trustworthy mainstream IM system out there atm.
all that information can, and will be used, to make target advertisement. No big deal since they already analyse our email.
Not necessarily, IMO email tends to be:
More formal - There is a plethora of personal information brought up casually and spontaneously in live conversation you just wouldn't get in an email. I personally don't want what I talk about with friends being used to try and sell me crap... after all I probably use IM (and Skype) more than I do my land line. Sure this information is only processed by machine, but still Google more granular baadger metadata for analysis than I would like.
More full of noise and not under my control - As a consumer analysing my work related mail or all the junk mail (not necessarily spam or unwanted) I receive is useless for them. The emails I receive aren't under my control or tailored to me to a great extent so why should assumptions based upon them be? Personally, I've noticed most of the ads I get while on Gmail are totally uninteresting
I'm not paranoid about Google's systems learning my favourite colour or what I like to eat for tea, what irk's me is just how much detail and how many logs these systems have to make before the ad's start becoming interesting and relevent.
For webmasters running a topical websites, I think text or near text only auto-tailored ads was a great idea. I'm just not convinced for those of us with ad blindness and like to think we have some consumer smarts, but might actually be interesed in good products and services, that it's yet useful to an extent worth everything _we_ give to the big G.
I'd second this, even if it did work out slightly _more_ expensive than what you _think_ the place you're looking at now, it gives you the opportunity to manage your budget without having to worry about an unexpectedly high bill. Peace of mind is worth a few pennies.
On the other hand, some people will say the experience of managing utility bills, wrangling co-habitants about their energy usage and learning to suffer a bit in your home is a healthy one.
Another thing, think hard whether it's worth doing it at all. I have a friend currently moving off-campus into a house with utilities inclusive. For on campus university accomodation he is paying £75/week for a box room with en-suite. In his new house, which he's sharing with 4 others, he'll be paying £95/week and getting essentially the same thing (but with added freedoms of course). Personally, I think the only reason he's doing it for room for a double bed.
You may think you're getting on in life moving of university accomodation and have your own place, but why not make the most of the easy life while you can? There is plenty of time in (hopefully) the next 40-60 years to be stingey with the electricity.
I agree that DRM and signed drivers are bad _IF_ the system prevents you from installing non-signed drivers. Your "it's mine" attitude is fine until you expect the 'original author' or manufacturer to bail you out when you fuck up. I was merely pointing out that giving someone who provides you with some sort of support in an official capacity, much like Redhat does with Linux, the ability to sign drivers is a good thing.
IMO, the lack of the notion of a 'product' with open source software is one of it's weaknesses. Not everyone can be bothered or is able to code and how do non-tech savvy users really know if Linux distro X hasn't messed with a manufacturers linux drivers and for what purpose?
Nothing I said nullifies the 'more eyes' principle or prevents the open source effort from doing good.
Yes because everyone who attends university, for example, has an external box connected to a line with equivalent bandwidth to said university, that they don't need to pay for, and have sufficient access to setup such a proxy...no wait, thats rare.
Another really good port btw is 1863, the MSN Messenger service uses this port, it's above the 1024 service level (so easily setup for use by IRC daemons on shell accounts for example), allowed through most firewalls, and, like 443, it's already SSL so won't raise any suspicion.
4) original author of signed/DRM'd driver sees said fixed version 5) original author ports your fixes to original release and gives you credit 6) original author signs/DRM's new driver 7) original author releases new code
The GPL is not incompatible with this scenario at all. Signed drivers is the only way to get a stamp of approvable by someone offering you warranty for a product. If you buy a piece of hardware that comes with a signed Windows driver and your machine meets all the apparent requirements and yet it doesn't work, you're entitled to a refund (IMO). On the other hand, if you've meddled with the driver, then perhaps not.
The problem of course is when you can't use unsigned drivers if you accept the risks and losses.
Semiconductor physics is part of the electronics degree in the first year. I do agree with you in that a vacuum tube is easier to visualise than these modern marvels. That said, there is nothing complex about P and N type doping, electrons, holes and layers of silicon at the _conceptual_ level.
There was _one_ XP CD in the office, a nice little CD-R with the key written on the CD itself with a Sharpie -- that's how they come from Microsoft, right?
Kryten appeared in season 2 if i'm not mistaken, or maybe even end of season 1. I can't be bothered to check but I feel he added alot of value to the show.
All that baby batter on the brain would explain the rise in teenage pregnancy as well. We may be onto something here. Want to team up and get a government grant?
Slashdot Mirror
Has been improved greatly in TP2. I'm glad they finally changed the cryptic double drop-down settings to some plain english checkboxes and radios.
Drag it to a toolbar or click it to have it installed into your toolbar customisation pallete under "My Buttons". If you disable "Show close button on each tab" in General (Tools -> Preferences) then you'll end up with behaviour identical to Firefox.
This isn't true, they're just harder to find. Opera has quite a tradition of INI editing and subtlety when it comes to options and functionality.
I've tried using FF's about:config (or any XUL app) on a Pentium II and got very frustrated. I think Opera's current webpage implementation is just more elegant, but I guess that is a matter of personal preference.
Here is my configuration. It's Opera 9.0 TP2, with just a few mods. I use the Breeze Simplified skin. I disabled the sidebar _toggle_ (A thin strip down the left hand side, but F4 toggles the sidebar anyway so I don't use it). The actual sidebar is hidden by default. I've added everything you see to the status bar too, none of it lost me any pixelage (I think this is a great example of how customizable Opera is).
I don't see how anyone can say the Opera UI is not very customizable unless they haven't spent half an hour playing around with it. On the other hand after months of use I still find new ways of doing things occasionally. To the right you can see is how I prefer my Fox, the two browsers are pretty much on par with each other in terms of screen real estate.
As you can see from task manager though, Opera' virtual and peak memory footprint is _larger_ than Firefox, I made comment on this yesterday
Part of the solution to this of course IMO is getting good DRM _content_ out there in the mainstream, and eventually people will get used to, and accept it. Sure it'll make piracy somewhat easier but i don't think, personally, it'd increase the volumne of pirated material.
This doesn't necessarily hold water. You can't stop someone from filming the big screen while at the cinema if they happen to have super high resolution covert cameras embedded in their skull either. People still get away with filming in the cinema (with popcorn box camcorders) even though they're supposed to be being watched by cinema staff. How is this different from circumventing hardware or even just software enforced DRM watchguards?
Two differences:
1) The chance you'll get caught and punished (e.g. fined for stealing cable tv, banned from the cinema), i.e. some alarm system that calls the cops on you.
2) As I said in sibling post, DRM makes people want to keep the file because they've already put in the 'effort' to get it and feel subtley cheated that such a blatant slap on the wrist has been brought down upon them.
Spamhaus's Register of Known Spam Operations contains quite alot of detail on some known spammers.
Filtering the email is usually more effective because the mail itself follows more determinate patterns, such as key words, obfuscation, originating IP's, fake headers and malformed HTML whereas most of these 'companies' operate from shadey websites that move around alot that are hard and expensive to trace and punish. It's also difficult to prove they had a any direct involvement with the spamming.
Their drones are oblivious to normal conversation... you have to plant some bait.
ohprettyplease@ireallylovespam.com
givemespam@ohyesidoreallylovespam.com
spamgoeshere@yahoo.com
yesindeedgimmespamtoo@aol.com
There, now they'll hear him...oh... damn thats bad.
Correction: Minifox not Littlefox.
In addition and for completeness, I don't use the standard Firefox theme (I use Littlefox, Breeze or any other nice 'Compact' themes going) and have only the "Tab X" (adds an x to all your tabs like in Opera) and FasterFox (tweaks rendering settings) extensions installed. Although i'm not claiming this is the reason I get low memory usage, it probably helps a bit (lack of huge # of extensions and graphics).
IMHO it seems to vary alot from system to system on how well that naughty fox behaves.
I've actually found the latest Firefox (v1.5.0.1) to be very very gentle with my memory. After opening BBC News, Slashdot, Digg, MSN.com and Google in tabs both FF and Opera 9 TP2 I've found that FF uses approximately 35MB in RAM and 35MB 'VM size' compared to about 40-55MB in RAM for Opera and 70MB 'VM size'.
I couldn't believe it (I am a die hard Opera 'fanboy', although all things said Opera still wins hands down in terms of rendering performance, application startup time and general UI responsiveness).
One interesting observation, by default* Firefox doesn't swap out to memory to disk when you minimise the window, unlike Opera where doing so will reduce the RAM usage to something like 4-8 MB ('VM size' remains unchanged). Interestingly this doesn't return to the full amount when maximised again until you've 'visited' all the tabs and done some navigation.
This is my experience on WinXP, I haven't had any issues with multi-100MB usage since the release of FF 1.5.
* It's worth noting that you can enable memory clipping on minimise in Firefox. Someone can google it if they care.
Movies for example...
Copying a DVD someone lent to you still takes some modest effort (time to rip and re-encode and/or burn, cost in media/hard drive space) and after you've watched it on a TV (which is something you'll most likely be doing) the thought of copying it usually goes out of mind or doesn't occur.
An encrypted video file that becomes useless after X hours on the other hand is going to annoy you because the 'cost' of having it (hard disk space and the time and bandwidth it took you to download) has already been 'paid'.
IMO it comes down to whether the annoyances of copying a digital format come before or after the enjoyment of watching the movie whether you're likely to copy a movie illegally. Most household piracy is casual in nature and just a result of wanting to hoard things not screw someone out of royalties because you're too cheap or lazy to actually buy your own copy.
So I suppose to port the idea of lending or sharing a book or movie to a friend you would have to have it so your copy is disabled for a period of time whilst their copy in unlocked. Sort of like giving your friends access to a user/pass restricted website which is restricted to the visitors IP address for a fixed period of time after you login.
If such a DRM scheme was possible without tamper we would indeed have the perfect 'sharing' mechanism.
Not to disagree with what you said...
IRC servers form a tree like structure, on most networks there is no SINGLE machine which can log all conversations on said network. Each branch can function independently if need be. The same goes for IM like MSN and Yahoo I suspect, although IRC servers are run by lots of different admins working in colaboration, not giant corporations.
IRC is more transparent in that you can choose which server to which to connect and easily run a LINKS command to see the network structure and there are more tangible admins to talk to. On top of this direct client-client communication (DCC) has been apart of IRC for a long time for both files AND chat.
IMO IRC is the most trustworthy mainstream IM system out there atm.
Not necessarily, IMO email tends to be:
I'm not paranoid about Google's systems learning my favourite colour or what I like to eat for tea, what irk's me is just how much detail and how many logs these systems have to make before the ad's start becoming interesting and relevent.
For webmasters running a topical websites, I think text or near text only auto-tailored ads was a great idea. I'm just not convinced for those of us with ad blindness and like to think we have some consumer smarts, but might actually be interesed in good products and services, that it's yet useful to an extent worth everything _we_ give to the big G.
Nonsense, you're only mature when you're old enough for Ultra Porn.
I'd second this, even if it did work out slightly _more_ expensive than what you _think_ the place you're looking at now, it gives you the opportunity to manage your budget without having to worry about an unexpectedly high bill. Peace of mind is worth a few pennies.
On the other hand, some people will say the experience of managing utility bills, wrangling co-habitants about their energy usage and learning to suffer a bit in your home is a healthy one.
Another thing, think hard whether it's worth doing it at all. I have a friend currently moving off-campus into a house with utilities inclusive. For on campus university accomodation he is paying £75/week for a box room with en-suite. In his new house, which he's sharing with 4 others, he'll be paying £95/week and getting essentially the same thing (but with added freedoms of course). Personally, I think the only reason he's doing it for room for a double bed.
You may think you're getting on in life moving of university accomodation and have your own place, but why not make the most of the easy life while you can? There is plenty of time in (hopefully) the next 40-60 years to be stingey with the electricity.
I agree that DRM and signed drivers are bad _IF_ the system prevents you from installing non-signed drivers. Your "it's mine" attitude is fine until you expect the 'original author' or manufacturer to bail you out when you fuck up. I was merely pointing out that giving someone who provides you with some sort of support in an official capacity, much like Redhat does with Linux, the ability to sign drivers is a good thing.
IMO, the lack of the notion of a 'product' with open source software is one of it's weaknesses. Not everyone can be bothered or is able to code and how do non-tech savvy users really know if Linux distro X hasn't messed with a manufacturers linux drivers and for what purpose?
Nothing I said nullifies the 'more eyes' principle or prevents the open source effort from doing good.
Yes because everyone who attends university, for example, has an external box connected to a line with equivalent bandwidth to said university, that they don't need to pay for, and have sufficient access to setup such a proxy...no wait, thats rare.
Another really good port btw is 1863, the MSN Messenger service uses this port, it's above the 1024 service level (so easily setup for use by IRC daemons on shell accounts for example), allowed through most firewalls, and, like 443, it's already SSL so won't raise any suspicion.
4) original author of signed/DRM'd driver sees said fixed version
5) original author ports your fixes to original release and gives you credit
6) original author signs/DRM's new driver
7) original author releases new code
The GPL is not incompatible with this scenario at all. Signed drivers is the only way to get a stamp of approvable by someone offering you warranty for a product. If you buy a piece of hardware that comes with a signed Windows driver and your machine meets all the apparent requirements and yet it doesn't work, you're entitled to a refund (IMO). On the other hand, if you've meddled with the driver, then perhaps not.
The problem of course is when you can't use unsigned drivers if you accept the risks and losses.
I'm not asking them to spend money advertising the fact that they're way behind the curve on browsers, just to stop lying to me.
'Innovation' is irrelevent and tiresome. What matters is the idea is out there. And hey, you know them thumbnail previews of tabs new to IE7? The ones no other browser has? Yeah. Well there is a copycat Firefox extension and a similar feature will available in Opera 9.
ActiveX.
Semiconductor physics is part of the electronics degree in the first year. I do agree with you in that a vacuum tube is easier to visualise than these modern marvels. That said, there is nothing complex about P and N type doping, electrons, holes and layers of silicon at the _conceptual_ level.
There was _one_ XP CD in the office, a nice little CD-R with the key written on the CD itself with a Sharpie -- that's how they come from Microsoft, right?
Yep, thats how the best ones come.
Kryten appeared in season 2 if i'm not mistaken, or maybe even end of season 1. I can't be bothered to check but I feel he added alot of value to the show.
All that baby batter on the brain would explain the rise in teenage pregnancy as well. We may be onto something here. Want to team up and get a government grant?