Not going to start a war BSD vs GPL all over again, but it seems fair to me that if you want to use the work others have done, you contribute. BSD license does not provide that IMNSHO.
The BSD license doesn't require that anyone building on your code to contribute to the common source pool to the extent that the GPL does, but it doesn't prevent contribution either. In fact, BSD-like licenses encourage some kinds of contributions: contributions from companies that want to release a version of the product with closed-source addons. (For Netscape, those addons include AIM and a spell checker.)
(And yes, even if you don't use Un*x, there is software to allow multiple desktops under Windows).
Can you point me to some? Multiple desktops and textutils are the two major things I find lacking in Windows 98 compared to the Solaris/X/fvwm terminals at my school, and I've already figured out how to get textutils working (cygwin).
Opera isn't viable for most people because its user interface is very confusing. For example, to import your Internet Explorer favorites into Opera's hotlist (which Opera doesn't do automatically), you have to right-click on an item in your hotlist, choose 'File' from a context menu with 10 items and 2 submenus, and then choose 'Import Internet Explorer Favorites...'. To disable javascript, you have to look in the "plugins" section of preferences.
There are also a few places where Opera is clearly sacrificing usablility for speed. Context menus don't appear until you lift the right mouse button, because of the gesture feature, which is great for power users but not very useful for most users. Accidentally moving the mouse cursor a tiny bit while trying to invoke a context menu causes the context menu to not appear, and sometimes results in a destructive action such as closing the window. Browser windows are constrained as MDI children, allowing them to appear faster, but making it difficult to use the browser for separate tasks at the same time.
It also has a few infuriating bugs, such as the way the command "opera http://www.slashdot.org/" opens a window containing both my home page and slashdot.org, with my home page in front.
I have to admit, though, Opera is amazingly fast, and the threaded javascript is impressive (you can interact with the browser or a web page while javascript on the page is caught in an infinite loop).
when YOU take the code, and make your own product, you now have a triple choice as to what license you want to distribute your code under
It's better than that -- you now have 8 choices for licensing when you redistribute Mozilla, because you can distribute the code under any combination of licenses. (The empty set is a choice because both the BSD and the MPL allow distributing just binaries.)
But has Bugzilla been used successfully for smaller projects? And for users/bug reporters that are not necessarily the same as developers?
I don't know how many small projects use Bugzilla, but I can answer your second question. Mozilla has many bug reporters and other QA volunteers who are not developers. QA for Mozilla includes marking identical bugs as duplicates, noting when two bugs are similar (as comments in each bug report), and making sure "fixed" bugs have actually been fixed.
That's not to say that bugzilla has a great UI, but it is possible for non-developers to use it.
You want us to use the web frontend. We spend a lot of time in BugZilla. The more dogfood [tf.hut.fi] we eat, the better.
That's only true if you happen to be developing a web browser. (Fwiw, I don't think there's any problem with using a web interface to a bug-tracking system, although I can't say I've tried any other interfaces.)
Crash bugs are hard to search for, because they're usually summarized by the function that Mozilla crashes in rather than how you get Mozilla to crash. Some crash bugs have both, but often a crash can be triggered in several different ways ways. 26% of the crashers I've filed turned out to be duplicates, compared to 15% of all of the bugs I've reported.
Your dup helped to point out that lots of people were encountering bug 99057, so it wasn't completely wasted.
I've had users complain that forms are broken because they don't submit on Enter in Netscape, and then you have to explain that it's a browser issue, not your form.
And making it a pref would fix that how? If a user doesn't think to try hitting the "submit" button when enter doesn't work, they're even less likely to look in prefs for a way to make hitting enter work.
IE's behavior (enter submits a form except in a textarea) makes sense, and that's what Mozilla does now.
Hmm, so when a popular person does something bad, the media should mention that the person was popular, but when a popular person does something good, it shouldn't mention the fact that he was popular, because he was "probably an exception to the rule"? That kind of reporting would be guaranteed to bias viewers against popular people.
That's bug 97829, "simple in a form causes submit", marked as invalid. You can vote for the bug even though it's currently marked invalid. (I'm currently voting for two 'wontfix' bugs and one 'invalid' bug in addition to a bunch of open bugs.)
1. This was a recent regression, and I think it was an unintentional one. The bookmarks menu used to use the same height for menu items as other menus.
2. Configurability is good, but sane default behavior is better. This is especially true here because the setting "height of bookmarks in menu" is part of a theme, which can't be mixed with any other themes. (Also, it would look silly to have "height of bookmarks in menu" listed in preferences.)
IE generally submits all forms on Enter, including sometimes when you are trying to type in a textarea:P I haven't got this installed yet, but it would be really interesting if they went with IE's convention.
One nightly Mozilla build actually did have this bug -- hitting enter in a textarea would submit the form. See the last few comments in bug 22526, "Enter in text input submits form only if there is exactly one text input".
You really don't want it on contacts. You eyes can get irriated very easily by a lot of things and you really don't want that if your life have to depend on it.
Not to mention the fact that it's hard to rub your eyes or take out your contacts when you're wearing a full-body, pressurized space suit.
Re:I used slashdot to gauge public opinion
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Handling the Loads
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· Score: 2
One problem with using Slashdot as a gauge of public opinion is that Slashdot is biased toward geekiness, toward protecting privacy even at great cost, and against large corporations and major religions. If you were aware of the kinds of biases that are common on Slashdot, you could ignore comments related to those topics -- but then you would be mislead if non-Slashdotters were focusing on those topics.
I thought Plastic did a slightly better job of being unbiased, but then again Plastic has a reputation for having a strong liberal bias, and I tend to be liberal.
Re:Good job to /., but forgive CNN and MSNBC
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Handling the Loads
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· Score: 2
Did Slashdot switch to light mode globally at any point on Tuesday? That would have saved some bandwidth, and also would have allowed most graphical browsers to display the large threads more quickly. (IE/NS4/Opera won't display any text of a heavy-mode Slashdot page until the entire page is recieved. IE/NS4/Opera in light mode and Mozilla in heavy mode display the story as soon as it finishes coming in but won't display the comments until the entire page loads. Mozilla in light mode displays comments as they come in.)
I use light mode normally, so I wouldn't have noticed if Slashdot made everyone use light mode temporarily. Early on Tuesday I was getting static, non-light versions of the homepage no matter what slashdot URL I clicked on, but that problem went away quickly.
Re:Oh, that was just an excuse
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More On Tragedy
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· Score: 1
What was Ehud Barak thinking at the time? I don't know. I believe he saw it coming but tried to keep to the original course of action anyway. What else could he have done? What do you do when your mind tells you that it will not work, not thi time, but your heart tells you that you must have hope, that the chance for peace is worth taking this enormous risk to your country and to your people?
IIRC, Barak was said at the time that peace talks would not continue until terrorism stopped completely. Maybe that was the best thing to do, but it seems to me that an ultimatum like that makes peace very difficult. A few (IMO) Palestinians unsatisfied with Israel's concessions were able to halt the negotiations.
Slashdot Mirror
Not going to start a war BSD vs GPL all over again, but it seems fair to me that if you want to use the work others have done, you contribute. BSD license does not provide that IMNSHO.
The BSD license doesn't require that anyone building on your code to contribute to the common source pool to the extent that the GPL does, but it doesn't prevent contribution either. In fact, BSD-like licenses encourage some kinds of contributions: contributions from companies that want to release a version of the product with closed-source addons. (For Netscape, those addons include AIM and a spell checker.)
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Never underestimate the total energy of a fully-fueled 757 moving at top speed.
(And yes, even if you don't use Un*x, there is software to allow multiple desktops under Windows).
Can you point me to some? Multiple desktops and textutils are the two major things I find lacking in Windows 98 compared to the Solaris/X/fvwm terminals at my school, and I've already figured out how to get textutils working (cygwin).
Opera isn't viable for most people because its user interface is very confusing. For example, to import your Internet Explorer favorites into Opera's hotlist (which Opera doesn't do automatically), you have to right-click on an item in your hotlist, choose 'File' from a context menu with 10 items and 2 submenus, and then choose 'Import Internet Explorer Favorites...'. To disable javascript, you have to look in the "plugins" section of preferences.
There are also a few places where Opera is clearly sacrificing usablility for speed. Context menus don't appear until you lift the right mouse button, because of the gesture feature, which is great for power users but not very useful for most users. Accidentally moving the mouse cursor a tiny bit while trying to invoke a context menu causes the context menu to not appear, and sometimes results in a destructive action such as closing the window. Browser windows are constrained as MDI children, allowing them to appear faster, but making it difficult to use the browser for separate tasks at the same time.
It also has a few infuriating bugs, such as the way the command "opera http://www.slashdot.org/" opens a window containing both my home page and slashdot.org, with my home page in front.
I have to admit, though, Opera is amazingly fast, and the threaded javascript is impressive (you can interact with the browser or a web page while javascript on the page is caught in an infinite loop).
Ok, I'm an idiot. Mozilla is being relicensed under the MPL, GPL, and LGPL, not the BSD as I implied above.
when YOU take the code, and make your own product, you now have a triple choice as to what license you want to distribute your code under
It's better than that -- you now have 8 choices for licensing when you redistribute Mozilla, because you can distribute the code under any combination of licenses. (The empty set is a choice because both the BSD and the MPL allow distributing just binaries.)
Acitive scripting off => no popups
Active scripting off => no bookmarklets, too.
Btw, "nimda" is admin spelled backwards.
I've tested this, and it works -- MSIE now asks my whether or not I want to execute the program instead of running it automatically.
Which is great until you accidentally click 'yes' to a dialog that pops up while you're in the middle of frantically closing porn pop-ups.
But has Bugzilla been used successfully for smaller projects? And for users/bug reporters that are not necessarily the same as developers?
I don't know how many small projects use Bugzilla, but I can answer your second question. Mozilla has many bug reporters and other QA volunteers who are not developers. QA for Mozilla includes marking identical bugs as duplicates, noting when two bugs are similar (as comments in each bug report), and making sure "fixed" bugs have actually been fixed.
That's not to say that bugzilla has a great UI, but it is possible for non-developers to use it.
You want us to use the web frontend. We spend a lot of time in BugZilla. The more dogfood [tf.hut.fi] we eat, the better.
That's only true if you happen to be developing a web browser. (Fwiw, I don't think there's any problem with using a web interface to a bug-tracking system, although I can't say I've tried any other interfaces.)
Crash bugs are hard to search for, because they're usually summarized by the function that Mozilla crashes in rather than how you get Mozilla to crash. Some crash bugs have both, but often a crash can be triggered in several different ways ways. 26% of the crashers I've filed turned out to be duplicates, compared to 15% of all of the bugs I've reported.
Your dup helped to point out that lots of people were encountering bug 99057, so it wasn't completely wasted.
I've had users complain that forms are broken because they don't submit on Enter in Netscape, and then you have to explain that it's a browser issue, not your form.
And making it a pref would fix that how? If a user doesn't think to try hitting the "submit" button when enter doesn't work, they're even less likely to look in prefs for a way to make hitting enter work.
IE's behavior (enter submits a form except in a textarea) makes sense, and that's what Mozilla does now.
Hmm, so when a popular person does something bad, the media should mention that the person was popular, but when a popular person does something good, it shouldn't mention the fact that he was popular, because he was "probably an exception to the rule"? That kind of reporting would be guaranteed to bias viewers against popular people.
That's bug 97829, "simple in a form causes submit", marked as invalid. You can vote for the bug even though it's currently marked invalid. (I'm currently voting for two 'wontfix' bugs and one 'invalid' bug in addition to a bunch of open bugs.)
Or stop whining and use a different theme!
Two responses:
1. This was a recent regression, and I think it was an unintentional one. The bookmarks menu used to use the same height for menu items as other menus.
2. Configurability is good, but sane default behavior is better. This is especially true here because the setting "height of bookmarks in menu" is part of a theme, which can't be mixed with any other themes. (Also, it would look silly to have "height of bookmarks in menu" listed in preferences.)
IE generally submits all forms on Enter, including sometimes when you are trying to type in a textarea :P I haven't got this installed yet, but it would be really interesting if they went with IE's convention.
One nightly Mozilla build actually did have this bug -- hitting enter in a textarea would submit the form. See the last few comments in bug 22526, "Enter in text input submits form only if there is exactly one text input".
I think bugzilla runs into database speed problems before it runs out of bandwidth, but I could be wrong.
It's quite possible that the U.S. government knew something was being planned but had no idea what.
You really don't want it on contacts. You eyes can get irriated very easily by a lot of things and you really don't want that if your life have to depend on it.
Not to mention the fact that it's hard to rub your eyes or take out your contacts when you're wearing a full-body, pressurized space suit.
One problem with using Slashdot as a gauge of public opinion is that Slashdot is biased toward geekiness, toward protecting privacy even at great cost, and against large corporations and major religions. If you were aware of the kinds of biases that are common on Slashdot, you could ignore comments related to those topics -- but then you would be mislead if non-Slashdotters were focusing on those topics.
I thought Plastic did a slightly better job of being unbiased, but then again Plastic has a reputation for having a strong liberal bias, and I tend to be liberal.
Did Slashdot switch to light mode globally at any point on Tuesday? That would have saved some bandwidth, and also would have allowed most graphical browsers to display the large threads more quickly. (IE/NS4/Opera won't display any text of a heavy-mode Slashdot page until the entire page is recieved. IE/NS4/Opera in light mode and Mozilla in heavy mode display the story as soon as it finishes coming in but won't display the comments until the entire page loads. Mozilla in light mode displays comments as they come in.)
I use light mode normally, so I wouldn't have noticed if Slashdot made everyone use light mode temporarily. Early on Tuesday I was getting static, non-light versions of the homepage no matter what slashdot URL I clicked on, but that problem went away quickly.
What was Ehud Barak thinking at the time? I don't know. I believe he saw it coming but tried to keep to the original course of action anyway. What else could he have done? What do you do when your mind tells you that it will not work, not thi time, but your heart tells you that you must have hope, that the chance for peace is worth taking this enormous risk to your country and to your people?
IIRC, Barak was said at the time that peace talks would not continue until terrorism stopped completely. Maybe that was the best thing to do, but it seems to me that an ultimatum like that makes peace very difficult. A few (IMO) Palestinians unsatisfied with Israel's concessions were able to halt the negotiations.
This attack has all the earmarkings of a cowardly act by Arab fanatics.
How is suicide cowardly? (Other than that, I agree with you -- McVeigh wasn't a suicide bomber, and suicide tactics aren't common among Americans.)
Importantly -- remember, blood is in demand. The Red Cross' site is mobbed
I'm worried that might be true in more than one way.