2 (as per usual) is a special case. 5 and 13 aren't mersenne numbers and therefore aren't in the list.
Those numbers are the "exponent" as in 2 to the power of 5 minus 1 = 31 and 2 to the power of 13 minus 1 = 8191 are both mersenne primes and are both strings of 1 in binary.
People always seem to cite something being a pyramid scheme as the obvious reason we should fear and run away from something. However there's one important thing to remember: it's good at the top.
Like the article says getting your free ipod is presumably as easy as ragging out your friends. So it comes down to what's more important - friends or a shiny new ipod.
While I don't know the validity of this particular offer just beware that the only losers are the guys on the bottom row. Just make sure that isn't you.
In my university course we were "introduced" to Linux via sshing into a local server. Now everyone on the course believes that Linux is some sort of interactive text editor and in a survey only 3 people out of about 200 said they'd rather run Linux over Windows.
I can only assume this is the general trend of Computer Science higher education in the UK and therefore in 2 years time there will likely be approximately 3 degree-qualified potential Linux admins coming out of my University.
Lots of people reply to this with "are these reliable?". The answer is simple. These stats are 100% reliable. These stats show with 100% correctness which browsers claimed to connect to this specific site.
Do these stats tell us anything about your site? Not much. It's totally ridiculous to take from this that you should or shouldn't support other browsers because of their share of this site's viewers.
The only stats that should influence your decision of which browser to support is the stats on that site. The stats from similar sites are interesting as an indicator but they're nothing but a very unreliable guess.
However what makes this interesting is the fact that this one specific site is seeing Mozilla usage grow at the expense of IE usage. While we shouldn't use this to imfulence any professional decisions it is good news if you're rooting for the underdog.
People are saying that IE has a 95% share and it isn't changing. But yet again that's on some specific site somewhere. No site is more reliable than any other but with these sort of trends it's always good to see.
Surely your own site stats are the only thing that counts? You can say with 100% certainty what the browsers visiting your site are reporting as and the majority are honest. Everyone else's site is irrelevant other than out of general wonderment.
So an answer could be no there's no reliable browser metric other than watching a range of site stats and checking out the trend.
If you can come up with something better than "Uhhh Firefox sucks!" then the Mozilla developers would love it if you could tell them about your problem.
Unfortunately Slashdot isn't the place to get anything done on Mozilla but a lot of the devs will jump to fix a bug in bugzilla with a simple testcase that explicitly demonstrates the problem. We look forward to your contribution.
Netscape has nothing to do with mozilla now but the code is there for them to do whatever they want with. Even you could release your very own Gecko browser.
There's plenty of other browsers - such as Epiphany, Galeon and K-Meleon - which use the exact same Gecko code but have their own ideas about UI and native widget integration.
What would be so bad about Microsoft taking Gecko code and making it into an IE version? People don't seem to look past the slyness of it but imagine that we could all use the technologies we've dreamed about on the intarweb. It would instantly update realistically available web technology 5 years.
So if Netscape want to lubricate the grip of IE on its majority then we should be grateful, the same goes for a DoomBrowser based on Gecko or even a SlashDotBrowser. The more the merrier.
The mozilla code fix amounts to:
if (URI == "shell")
nsJustSayNo();
There isn't much to steal. However that's only the temporary fix of "destroying the keys", I'm sure destroying the lock is far more difficult.
Actually http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=250180 is the first mention of the shell: bug. Bug 167475 is a catch all deciding whether or not Mozilla/Firefox should hand off unknown protocols. If it used a whitelist of known protocols as some people suggest then it would break a lot of things relied upon over various platforms.
The specific shell: bug was reported only Wednesday morning which gives us a total time of less than 48 hours.
Firefox on Linux is not affected, it won't be on Mac or any other platform.
Why do they list Firefox 0.x as affected at the top and then list browsers not affected at the bottom where most people probably won't even get to?
Shouldn't the affected browsers say something like 0.x before 0.9?
That was Qute for 0.9. Arvid was still working on improving his theme and including icons for some of the new functions such as Mail.
Winstripe is indeed the new theme. We've been debating the decision in the IRC channel and Steven Garrity believes the theme will survive the backlash and be good for Firefox in the future. I hope he's right.
Arvid's Qute theme will still be available for download so let's hope the Theme manager has been totally bug-freed by next week.
Don't worry about it. Everyone feels exactly the same. Once Firefox 0.9 arrives this will be totally different as extensions, themes and updating Firefox itself will all be handled by a gooey new managers.
Follow Ben Goodger's blog if you need some ammo to show people Firefox is still improving.
By the time 1.0 comes around all of the little annoyances will probably be gone.
Slashdot Mirror
2 (as per usual) is a special case. 5 and 13 aren't mersenne numbers and therefore aren't in the list. Those numbers are the "exponent" as in 2 to the power of 5 minus 1 = 31 and 2 to the power of 13 minus 1 = 8191 are both mersenne primes and are both strings of 1 in binary.
People always seem to cite something being a pyramid scheme as the obvious reason we should fear and run away from something. However there's one important thing to remember: it's good at the top.
Like the article says getting your free ipod is presumably as easy as ragging out your friends. So it comes down to what's more important - friends or a shiny new ipod.
While I don't know the validity of this particular offer just beware that the only losers are the guys on the bottom row. Just make sure that isn't you.
In my university course we were "introduced" to Linux via sshing into a local server. Now everyone on the course believes that Linux is some sort of interactive text editor and in a survey only 3 people out of about 200 said they'd rather run Linux over Windows.
I can only assume this is the general trend of Computer Science higher education in the UK and therefore in 2 years time there will likely be approximately 3 degree-qualified potential Linux admins coming out of my University.
Lots of people reply to this with "are these reliable?". The answer is simple. These stats are 100% reliable. These stats show with 100% correctness which browsers claimed to connect to this specific site.
Do these stats tell us anything about your site? Not much. It's totally ridiculous to take from this that you should or shouldn't support other browsers because of their share of this site's viewers.
The only stats that should influence your decision of which browser to support is the stats on that site. The stats from similar sites are interesting as an indicator but they're nothing but a very unreliable guess.
However what makes this interesting is the fact that this one specific site is seeing Mozilla usage grow at the expense of IE usage. While we shouldn't use this to imfulence any professional decisions it is good news if you're rooting for the underdog.
People are saying that IE has a 95% share and it isn't changing. But yet again that's on some specific site somewhere. No site is more reliable than any other but with these sort of trends it's always good to see.
Surely your own site stats are the only thing that counts? You can say with 100% certainty what the browsers visiting your site are reporting as and the majority are honest. Everyone else's site is irrelevant other than out of general wonderment.
So an answer could be no there's no reliable browser metric other than watching a range of site stats and checking out the trend.
Derive what you will.
If you can come up with something better than "Uhhh Firefox sucks!" then the Mozilla developers would love it if you could tell them about your problem.
I'd bet any issue you can come up with is either difficult and being worked on, something which is totally unused and therefore possibly lacking dots on is or not even complete but still implementing 99% of it all
Unfortunately Slashdot isn't the place to get anything done on Mozilla but a lot of the devs will jump to fix a bug in bugzilla with a simple testcase that explicitly demonstrates the problem. We look forward to your contribution.
No-one is fielding all 3 browsers.
Netscape has nothing to do with mozilla now but the code is there for them to do whatever they want with. Even you could release your very own Gecko browser.
There's plenty of other browsers - such as Epiphany, Galeon and K-Meleon - which use the exact same Gecko code but have their own ideas about UI and native widget integration.
What would be so bad about Microsoft taking Gecko code and making it into an IE version? People don't seem to look past the slyness of it but imagine that we could all use the technologies we've dreamed about on the intarweb. It would instantly update realistically available web technology 5 years.
So if Netscape want to lubricate the grip of IE on its majority then we should be grateful, the same goes for a DoomBrowser based on Gecko or even a SlashDotBrowser. The more the merrier.
The mozilla code fix amounts to: if (URI == "shell") nsJustSayNo(); There isn't much to steal. However that's only the temporary fix of "destroying the keys", I'm sure destroying the lock is far more difficult.
Actually http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=250180 is the first mention of the shell: bug. Bug 167475 is a catch all deciding whether or not Mozilla/Firefox should hand off unknown protocols. If it used a whitelist of known protocols as some people suggest then it would break a lot of things relied upon over various platforms.
The specific shell: bug was reported only Wednesday morning which gives us a total time of less than 48 hours.
Firefox on Linux is not affected, it won't be on Mac or any other platform. Why do they list Firefox 0.x as affected at the top and then list browsers not affected at the bottom where most people probably won't even get to? Shouldn't the affected browsers say something like 0.x before 0.9?
That was Qute for 0.9. Arvid was still working on improving his theme and including icons for some of the new functions such as Mail.
Winstripe is indeed the new theme. We've been debating the decision in the IRC channel and Steven Garrity believes the theme will survive the backlash and be good for Firefox in the future. I hope he's right.
Arvid's Qute theme will still be available for download so let's hope the Theme manager has been totally bug-freed by next week.
The real reason is to show off how long our digital penis' are on the user page and the top producers pages.
What better way is there to pick up girls than to say you're the biggest GIMP on the planet?
Don't worry about it. Everyone feels exactly the same. Once Firefox 0.9 arrives this will be totally different as extensions, themes and updating Firefox itself will all be handled by a gooey new managers.
Follow Ben Goodger's blog if you need some ammo to show people Firefox is still improving.
By the time 1.0 comes around all of the little annoyances will probably be gone.