This is what I think Mozilla has done wrong. They release these non-functional Mx releases as code benchmarks, but fail to work on getting a nice looking, feature light version out the door so that large masses of people will USE it, and eventually have some of them join the project.
Ahem! The Mx releases are available as FUNCTIONAL BINARIES that you can use RIGHT NOW to browse the Web on multiple platforms (*nix, Win32, Mac) SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to be usable by non-developers who want to test early versions of the software.
Download M10 right now and have it load Slashdot. It is, to quote you, "a not-quite-there-yet, but promising version" -- you'll run into some bugs, but it certainly does a decent job for pre-beta code. Just look out for the textbox bug when you post your "hey, you're right!" followup.
How's the license, by the way? Does it meet snuff of can Netscape/AOL take it back any time they want?
RMS says it's Free Software. ESR says it's Open Source Software. The revocation clause was killed before any source was released in a public debate over the license beta. It can't be combined with GPL source, though, so don't mix the code!
Yes, but it doesn't solve the problem. There is no correlation between the (nominal) power of the Catholic Church even in non-First World nations and population growth. For example, Latin American nations tend to have lower natural rates of population increase than nations in Africa or South Asia.
What's RISC about and ISA with AltiVec instructions? You know, single "instructions" that take multiple cycles to process because they do multiple things?
That's the point. Not that "x86 is now RISC" but that traditional RISC is as dead as traditional CISC. If RISC is a two-story house and CISC is one-story, then the current chips are all three stories.
All software ever written in all history that has not been explicitly placed by its copyright holder into the public domain is copyrighted, including everything under the GPL. In fact, software that is not copyrighted cannot be effectively GPLed, since agreeing to a license is unnecessary to use the code.
2) any of that "really good substructure" that finds its way into Linux is a big legal problem waiting to happen.
If and only if the open-source license adopted is not the GPL and is not GPL compatible.
If W2K is RTM this year and available by February 2000 as everybody expects? Lots of people will need 1 gigahertz chips -- in the same timeframe as they are expected to be out.
The First Amendment does not give a blanket right to bribe public officials
A campaign contribution is not a bribe. The only benefit a public official derives from a campaign contribution is greater ability to convince voters to keep him on as a public official. That's no more a bribe than an AFL-CIO or newspaper endorsement. Allowing endorsements is not a "loophole" -- it's political speech/press, the very core of the First Amendment.
Other recent factors explaining why RAM has gone up in price:
U.S. raised tarriffs as a counter to Taiwanese "dumping" of RAM
RDRAM/SDRAM line conversions and re-conversions.
Deliberate production cutbacks industry-wide earlier this year because of low profits.
Price speculators buying up RAM after the first earthquake.
In short, it isn't all the quake's fault -- there would have been some price increase anyway. The quake just happened to come along at a time to spike things further.
That, in itself, would be a victory. Microsoft would then make its operating system GUI dependent on an open-source product.
No, it doesn't help crush Microsoft directly. But for MS to use open source software as a major part of its OS? Can you say PR victory? Can you say credibility? If Microsoft did this, they'd render themselves completely unable to FUD open source software.
Mozilla is going to die if it doesnt get finished VERY soon.
Are you actually saying that, if Mozilla takes another 18 months, but when it is released it is better than the contemporaneous releases of either Opera or Internet Explorer, and you don't have to pay for it, you wouldn't switch to it? And that enough other people wouldn't switch to it that it would utterly fail to gain enough marketshare to not be considered "dead"?
And, of course, on Linux and many other platforms the only competition to Mozilla is earlier versions of Netscape, as Opera and IE on those platforms is either neither planned or still vaporware. Are you saying that a free Mozilla released in 18 months would not replace Navigator 4.x as the dominant browser on those platforms? If so, is this because you think people would keep paying for Opera, because IE will be released for Linux, or because nobody will upgrade from Netscape 4.x to Mozilla?
I really wonder what standard has to be applied to a reply to your post to qualify as a "stupid remark" relative to your post.
In fact, I question the need to give the HRC (and whatever the Democrats' counterpart is, the HDC?) official house committee standing. The fact that members of Congress share a party should not be something to form a committee over, it should be an unofficial caucus at best.
I agree that it's questionable whether or not it should be an official part of the government; but the fact is that the HRC (like its Democratic counterpart) is provided for in the House rules (established in accordance with Article I Section 5 of the Constitution).
Although the post I'm referencing was made in reply to one of my posts, I think it's an appropriate answer to your objection. Read it here.
Humor is almost always about a "wrongness" (to reference Stranger in a Strange Land). To reference psychology, it's a coping mechanism. While I don't condone humor at the expense of Hemos himself, humorous posts that do not target him are not, IMHO, inappropriate here.
The GPL is as legally binding as Microsoft's EULA.
By violating the license, you've violated the copyright on the code. The party that can sue you is the copyright holder (typically the author in a GPL case, although the FSF also holds a lot of the copyrights).
The damages they can seek differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but would generally be based on how much revenue you made from their code (since it is unlikely that they lost revenue). You could also face criminal charges under certain circumstances.
There are already provisions for lawsuits involving nationals of differing nations under the Universal Copyright Convention and various other international treaties (Pan-American, etc.) that include almost every nation in which you could make money selling commercial software.
Since the term "large megacorp semi-monopolies" shows that you are completely open-minded and receptive to reasoned debate...
Hostility? I just don't look upon the small family farm with sentiment. We haven't been launching government programs for the last seventy years to save home looms or blacksmiths -- let the family farm survive or die on its own merits, if it has any.
Frankly, I'd rather get my food from somebody I don't have to bail out with my tax dollars every time there's bad weather. Note how this year's farm crisis that has forced millions of dollars of federal bailouts didn't affect enough of the food supply to change prices? Those farms should be allowed to go under.
In a hundred years small family farms will be a thing of the past no one needs to accelerate this trend.
It is well past time for the small family farm to have gone the way of the small family loom and the village ferrier. The more acceleration, the better.
Farmers in the U.S. already generally buy their seed each year instead of saving seeds already, with contracts that forbid them from saving seed.
Now, why do they do that? Because the seeds they buy are hybrids that are significantly more productive/resistant/etc. than the product of uncontrolled pollenation. It is therefore financially advantageous to buy seed each year and sell a larger crop than to save seeds and sell s smaller crop if you have sufficient capital.
You want a games machine for under $1000? They're called "consoles". Sony, Nintendo, and Sega make 'em.
My eMachines has a multi-read CD-ROM. The included modem doesn't matter since I have an @Home cable connection[1]. And while it may not have a separate 3D accelerator card, it's got on-board ATI 3D Rage Pro Turbo 2x AGP graphics with 4 MB of SGRAM.
Damned good deal for $520, including tax, printer, and monitor, after mail-in rebates (not the "internet" rebates, the real ones). I can spend $300 on upgrades and still come out ahead of a new Gateway or Dell machine.
[1]The 56K external modem I mentioned in a previous post on this subject is now on another machine. I still prefer externals to internals anyway.
The current climate models, which predict past temperature changes accurately (the ones ten years ago did not) do show the greenhouse effect to be a smaller problem than we thought. And even the worst projections give us 50 years to do nothing and still avoid any damaging consequences from the greenhouse effect, before accounting for European and Japanese Kyoto compliance.
In short, things will be better than we thought ten years ago, and we can do nothing for another thirty years without doing any damage. At the same time, we are taking steps -- the development of zero-emission vehicles, Europe and Japan committing to lowering emissions, etc.
Heck, if the Chinese decide use nuclear power relative to coal more than expected, the increasing levels of CO2 emissions that the models assume won't happen, either, which will push off warming even further into the future.
It's something to watch, it's a potential problem, but it is not currently a crisis.
2001: Cassini crashes into Saturn due to metric conversion error. Microscopic amounts of plutonium poison and kills Saturnian life.
2002: After child is electrocuted by improperly used generator, CPSC requires recall and redesign. Cheap power set back five years.
2003: Motor vehicle compaines declare bankruptcy under costs of replacing millions of vehicles for free. Mass unemployment. Flint, Mich., burns in riots.
2004: Clone dies from congenital defects, religious wackos declare it the "Judgment of God".
2005: Dalai Lama assassinated by Tibetan extremists.
2007: Then the peace process breaks down, Sri Lanka drowns in blood.
2008: Cited for lifetime achievement in the same year: Arnold Schwarzenegger, who died in a set accident in 2003.
2009: Except for secret bomb stockpiles in Israel, the U.S., Russia, China, India, Pakistan, France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa.
2010: It is later discovered that Quantum Genenerator emissions may cause cancer in labratory rats. Adoption delayed fifteen years while further tests are undertaken.
2011: Europan biota revealed as NASA funding hoax six weeks later.
2015: Collapse of South African economy, widespread lynchings of whites.
2016: Megawatt-hour move criticized as "inflationary", calls for establishment of copper-standard currencies.
2017: Sir Arthur Clarke assassinated by Egalatarian Society for having title while on the Hilton.
2019: Spaceguard cancelled, since there are no publically acknowledged supplies of nuclear weapons, all nuclear reactors were replaced by other power sources earlier, and the cost to start up those porograms is politically unsustainable. HE-warhead missiles and high energy lasers will fail to deflect huge asteroid that devastates biosphere in 2101.
2020: After increasing past humanity by several orders of magnitude, AIs figure out existence is pointless. All AIs commit suicide en masse in religious ritual.
2021: Specifically, they didn't bring enough water to get back home without dehydrating, because of a liter-gallon mixup. Oops...
2024: Later, it is revealed that the AIs joined God in the center of the Galaxy when they died, and sent the pulses to warn of the asteroid coming in 2101. (Heaven has nonlinear time).
2026: With canings.
2040: After a kid accidentally chokes on a UR-ed small plastic part, the UR is recalled. Availability is delayed for seven years.
2045: Unfortunately, nobody ever buys one.
2047: Hong Kong flattened by accidental nuclear detonation. China blames Universal Replicator misuse, availability delayed another ten years.
2051: Moon monsters protest, gunned down.
2057: In other news, crackers post "how to get your Universal Replicator to make nuclear weapons" on Usenet.
2058: Immenent death of Usenet predicted a record 1,856,342,098,845 times.
2061: Comet accidentally melted due to Kelvin-Farenheit conversion error.
2090: Unfortunately, nobody remembers where we left the coal...
2095: Space drive deployment delayed five years by EPA, concerned it might cause brain tumors.
1) Remember Netscape users have, generally, always downloaded their browser. Therefore, they are willing to download the next version.
2) The IE user of version X curve matches the "copies of Windows sold or AOL distributed with version X of IE included" curve reasonably well.
In short, IE users don't upgrade because they generally don't use downloaded browsers. Netscape users upgrade because they're used to using downloaded browsers.
(BTW: Don't complain about the generalizations. Anyone who goes bonkers over the use of generalizations proves himself an idiot.)
I don't really disagree -- that's why I said the techies would have derided such a numbering. However, the generations weren't anywhere near synched until 3.0 anyway, and there's really nothing mystical about keeping the numbers synched to capabilities (especially since the two are taking radically different paths nowadays).
And, it would have held back the goofiest of the rumormongering and theorizing and speculation.
A discussion/critique only of "Nude Descending a Staircase" is absolutely useless if the title of my essay is "The Flaws of the Socialist Realism School of Art". Similarly, a discussion/critique only of ideas that do not appear in CatB is absolutely useless in an eassy that purports to be a disucssion/critique of CatB.
Is not slapping the "5.0" version number on what was released as Netscape Communicator 4.5.
Think about it. Sure, techies would have derided the numbering a bit, and there would have been some confusion, but nobody would be talking about Netscape being dead/browser wars being over/Mozilla a failure.
So, today, Netscape 5.2 (4.7) would have recently started shipping while IE is still back at version 5.0, and people would be talking about how Mozilla is shaping up to be a major advance in browser technology and development methodology even if it's being delayed for a while.
And it even would have been truer to the original Mozilla roadmap, since the 4.5/4.6/4.7 series is descended from the old codebase like 5.0 was originally intended to be, and Netscape 6.0 was originally going to be the first NGLayout-based version of Netscape.
Slashdot Mirror
This is what I think Mozilla has done wrong. They release these non-functional Mx releases as code benchmarks, but fail to work on getting a nice looking, feature light version out the door so that large masses of people will USE it, and eventually have some of them join the project.
Ahem! The Mx releases are available as FUNCTIONAL BINARIES that you can use RIGHT NOW to browse the Web on multiple platforms (*nix, Win32, Mac) SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to be usable by non-developers who want to test early versions of the software.
Download M10 right now and have it load Slashdot. It is, to quote you, "a not-quite-there-yet, but promising version" -- you'll run into some bugs, but it certainly does a decent job for pre-beta code. Just look out for the textbox bug when you post your "hey, you're right!" followup.
How's the license, by the way? Does it meet snuff of can Netscape/AOL take it back any time they want?
RMS says it's Free Software. ESR says it's Open Source Software. The revocation clause was killed before any source was released in a public debate over the license beta. It can't be combined with GPL source, though, so don't mix the code!
Yes, but it doesn't solve the problem. There is no correlation between the (nominal) power of the Catholic Church even in non-First World nations and population growth. For example, Latin American nations tend to have lower natural rates of population increase than nations in Africa or South Asia.
Re: #4
India has 2.4% of Christians in its population, and there are even smaller groups of Catholics in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
While Italy, the negative population growth rate example used in the article, is nearly 100% Catholic.
Theory and data do not match.
Obviously you didn't read the article, but...
What's RISC about and ISA with AltiVec instructions? You know, single "instructions" that take multiple cycles to process because they do multiple things?
That's the point. Not that "x86 is now RISC" but that traditional RISC is as dead as traditional CISC. If RISC is a two-story house and CISC is one-story, then the current chips are all three stories.
Clause critique:
1) The software is still copyrighted
All software ever written in all history that has not been explicitly placed by its copyright holder into the public domain is copyrighted, including everything under the GPL. In fact, software that is not copyrighted cannot be effectively GPLed, since agreeing to a license is unnecessary to use the code.
2) any of that "really good substructure" that finds its way into Linux is a big legal problem waiting to happen.
If and only if the open-source license adopted is not the GPL and is not GPL compatible.
At the moment? No.
If W2K is RTM this year and available by February 2000 as everybody expects? Lots of people will need 1 gigahertz chips -- in the same timeframe as they are expected to be out.
The First Amendment does not give a blanket right to bribe public officials
A campaign contribution is not a bribe. The only benefit a public official derives from a campaign contribution is greater ability to convince voters to keep him on as a public official. That's no more a bribe than an AFL-CIO or newspaper endorsement. Allowing endorsements is not a "loophole" -- it's political speech/press, the very core of the First Amendment.
In short, it isn't all the quake's fault -- there would have been some price increase anyway. The quake just happened to come along at a time to spike things further.
That, in itself, would be a victory. Microsoft would then make its operating system GUI dependent on an open-source product.
No, it doesn't help crush Microsoft directly. But for MS to use open source software as a major part of its OS? Can you say PR victory? Can you say credibility? If Microsoft did this, they'd render themselves completely unable to FUD open source software.
Mozilla is going to die if it doesnt get finished VERY soon.
Are you actually saying that, if Mozilla takes another 18 months, but when it is released it is better than the contemporaneous releases of either Opera or Internet Explorer, and you don't have to pay for it, you wouldn't switch to it? And that enough other people wouldn't switch to it that it would utterly fail to gain enough marketshare to not be considered "dead"?
And, of course, on Linux and many other platforms the only competition to Mozilla is earlier versions of Netscape, as Opera and IE on those platforms is either neither planned or still vaporware. Are you saying that a free Mozilla released in 18 months would not replace Navigator 4.x as the dominant browser on those platforms? If so, is this because you think people would keep paying for Opera, because IE will be released for Linux, or because nobody will upgrade from Netscape 4.x to Mozilla?
I really wonder what standard has to be applied to a reply to your post to qualify as a "stupid remark" relative to your post.
In fact, I question the need to give the HRC (and whatever the Democrats' counterpart is, the HDC?) official house committee standing. The fact that members of Congress share a party should not be something to form a committee over, it should be an unofficial caucus at best.
I agree that it's questionable whether or not it should be an official part of the government; but the fact is that the HRC (like its Democratic counterpart) is provided for in the House rules (established in accordance with Article I Section 5 of the Constitution).
Although the post I'm referencing was made in reply to one of my posts, I think it's an appropriate answer to your objection. Read it here.
Humor is almost always about a "wrongness" (to reference Stranger in a Strange Land). To reference psychology, it's a coping mechanism. While I don't condone humor at the expense of Hemos himself, humorous posts that do not target him are not, IMHO, inappropriate here.
IANAL. IANAL. IANAL. IANAL. IANAL. IANAL. IANAL. IANAL.
The GPL is as legally binding as Microsoft's EULA.
By violating the license, you've violated the copyright on the code. The party that can sue you is the copyright holder (typically the author in a GPL case, although the FSF also holds a lot of the copyrights).
The damages they can seek differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but would generally be based on how much revenue you made from their code (since it is unlikely that they lost revenue). You could also face criminal charges under certain circumstances.
There are already provisions for lawsuits involving nationals of differing nations under the Universal Copyright Convention and various other international treaties (Pan-American, etc.) that include almost every nation in which you could make money selling commercial software.
Since the term "large megacorp semi-monopolies" shows that you are completely open-minded and receptive to reasoned debate...
Hostility? I just don't look upon the small family farm with sentiment. We haven't been launching government programs for the last seventy years to save home looms or blacksmiths -- let the family farm survive or die on its own merits, if it has any.
Frankly, I'd rather get my food from somebody I don't have to bail out with my tax dollars every time there's bad weather. Note how this year's farm crisis that has forced millions of dollars of federal bailouts didn't affect enough of the food supply to change prices? Those farms should be allowed to go under.
This discusses a similar project...
/. longer than I thought, to have remembered to look for that...
Wow. I've been on
In a hundred years small family farms will be a thing of the past no one needs to accelerate this trend.
It is well past time for the small family farm to have gone the way of the small family loom and the village ferrier. The more acceleration, the better.
Farmers in the U.S. already generally buy their seed each year instead of saving seeds already, with contracts that forbid them from saving seed.
Now, why do they do that? Because the seeds they buy are hybrids that are significantly more productive/resistant/etc. than the product of uncontrolled pollenation. It is therefore financially advantageous to buy seed each year and sell a larger crop than to save seeds and sell s smaller crop if you have sufficient capital.
You want a games machine for under $1000? They're called "consoles". Sony, Nintendo, and Sega make 'em.
My eMachines has a multi-read CD-ROM. The included modem doesn't matter since I have an @Home cable connection[1]. And while it may not have a separate 3D accelerator card, it's got on-board ATI 3D Rage Pro Turbo 2x AGP graphics with 4 MB of SGRAM.
Damned good deal for $520, including tax, printer, and monitor, after mail-in rebates (not the "internet" rebates, the real ones). I can spend $300 on upgrades and still come out ahead of a new Gateway or Dell machine.
[1]The 56K external modem I mentioned in a previous post on this subject is now on another machine. I still prefer externals to internals anyway.
The current climate models, which predict past temperature changes accurately (the ones ten years ago did not) do show the greenhouse effect to be a smaller problem than we thought. And even the worst projections give us 50 years to do nothing and still avoid any damaging consequences from the greenhouse effect, before accounting for European and Japanese Kyoto compliance.
In short, things will be better than we thought ten years ago, and we can do nothing for another thirty years without doing any damage. At the same time, we are taking steps -- the development of zero-emission vehicles, Europe and Japan committing to lowering emissions, etc.
Heck, if the Chinese decide use nuclear power relative to coal more than expected, the increasing levels of CO2 emissions that the models assume won't happen, either, which will push off warming even further into the future.
It's something to watch, it's a potential problem, but it is not currently a crisis.
No, it doesn't.
1) Remember Netscape users have, generally, always downloaded their browser. Therefore, they are willing to download the next version.
2) The IE user of version X curve matches the "copies of Windows sold or AOL distributed with version X of IE included" curve reasonably well.
In short, IE users don't upgrade because they generally don't use downloaded browsers. Netscape users upgrade because they're used to using downloaded browsers.
(BTW: Don't complain about the generalizations. Anyone who goes bonkers over the use of generalizations proves himself an idiot.)
I don't really disagree -- that's why I said the techies would have derided such a numbering. However, the generations weren't anywhere near synched until 3.0 anyway, and there's really nothing mystical about keeping the numbers synched to capabilities (especially since the two are taking radically different paths nowadays).
And, it would have held back the goofiest of the rumormongering and theorizing and speculation.
Any discussion and critique is good
A discussion/critique only of "Nude Descending a Staircase" is absolutely useless if the title of my essay is "The Flaws of the Socialist Realism School of Art". Similarly, a discussion/critique only of ideas that do not appear in CatB is absolutely useless in an eassy that purports to be a disucssion/critique of CatB.
Is not slapping the "5.0" version number on what was released as Netscape Communicator 4.5.
Think about it. Sure, techies would have derided the numbering a bit, and there would have been some confusion, but nobody would be talking about Netscape being dead/browser wars being over/Mozilla a failure.
So, today, Netscape 5.2 (4.7) would have recently started shipping while IE is still back at version 5.0, and people would be talking about how Mozilla is shaping up to be a major advance in browser technology and development methodology even if it's being delayed for a while.
And it even would have been truer to the original Mozilla roadmap, since the 4.5/4.6/4.7 series is descended from the old codebase like 5.0 was originally intended to be, and Netscape 6.0 was originally going to be the first NGLayout-based version of Netscape.