I have posted a question for the IE interview and ask you, what keeps you from fully implementing the CSS 2.1 standard in FF 2? Granted, you adhere to the spec much better than IE, but this is not justification enough to not follow.
Håkon Wium Lie's response about IE not following spec is that it is not in their best interests as a monopoly to do so. MS's response to this question revolves around priority. What priority is standards compliance to Mozilla? Also, what other things do you think hinder compliance as far as Firefox is concerned?
Which is unfortunate. As a trilingual person (I guess you could add a dozen or more if counted computer languages) I have gained quite a richness of life and human understanding from learning another's language. There are many idomatic expressions that may seem a little funny initially, but after some thought, really seem to make you look at the world in a different way.
For example, in the Mayan language K'ekchi', the term "Ma cuan sa' a ch'ol xbanunquil _________?", literial translates to mean Is it in your heart to do _________? which idiomatically means, "Are you willing to do ________?".
By not learning another's language, you lose an opportunity to look at the world through the 'eyes' of that language.
I work at a company where if you take classes on campus you get a binder called a manual, which is primarily composed of printed out powerpoint slides. This makes for a useless 'manual' inclass, let alone outside. There's no index, no contents, usually just a few tabs to seperate sections.
If I had to choose, I would prefer a higher quality doc than a digital one.
Assuming that usable means something more than chrome and cosmetics. I switched to Firefox not because it was prettier, 'easier to use', or because I'm anti-Microsoft. I, and many, many others have switched to Firefox because of security. I know beyond a shadow of doubt that no ActiveX malware will infect my machine because of use of Firefox. Security in and of itself ought to be the reason people switch to Firefox.
In what way is it worse? Let's try and qualify and quantify your complaint. Are you complaining that viewing the source is plain old text with no keyword highlighting? Is it worse because it opens inside notepad? Are you complaining that you can't make updated changes to the markup? C'mon! These are suppose to be questions that you're asking the person. If I were the one being presented this question, I'd ask in what way is it worse. But since there is no way to ask for clarification, I would discard it.
This past summer Håkon Wium Lie was interviewed on/. and my question was selected concerning IE7's glaring lack of full CSS support. Why is it that MS has avoided meeting at least the ACID2 spec for CSS in order to bring some semblance of comformity for developers?
Håkon Wium Lie's response to these questions is boiled down to the fact that you do have the talent and resources to fix these issues and he says that "the fundamental reason, I believe, is that standards don't benefit monopolists" like MS.
How do you respond to his comments (the author of the CSS spec) and does MS have any near future plans to adhere to the existing CSS standard? If not, what would it take for MS to take a more proactive role in supporting it?
I would suggest the money should be used instead to support a powerful well-funded lobbying effort for copyright reform...
I disagree. While $100 million is no laughable chunk o' change, its effectiveness is somewhat doubtful. Buying the rights to publish copyrighted works for all to use would have the most immediate (and gauranteed) benefit to those not just in the US, but all around the world.
I think reforming copyright is a futile effort at the present time. This isn't to say that it isn't worth worrying about, there just needs to be a more substantial and tangible reason than currently exists in order to move the politicians.
That's what you get for being a one trick pony. Eventually competitors move in to dilute market share or you run into an antiquation problem where your product is obsolete/useless. While some may bitch that this is another way of Microsoft consolidating their monopoly power, this change has been a long time coming. What else does McAffee do? Symantec has many different types of tools like backup software and disk repair utilities, but what else?
Take a look at Creative. At one point the realized that the Sound Blaster brand was not going to get them very far once generic sound cards found their way into every PC that gets manufactured. What did they do? Well, they gave graphics cards a try. I remember back in the 90s when you could get a Voodoo2 chipset from them. Now? They were one of the first to enter the MP3 player markets and continue to have *some* success despite Apple dominating that arena.
Get a life McAffee and Symantec, your days of being a market bottom feeder are coming to an end.
I really think that the judge realized that more was at stake than just SPAM. It has set an important precedant regarding the Internet and jurisdiction. Even though the US controls most of it, it is important to realize that the Internet is an ethereal place without solid jurisdictional boundaries. If the judge had signed away on pulling the domain name, it would have casted a devastating taint on how Law treats 'where' the Interent exactly is.
So I end up using Google one way or another. I almost always end up with Wikipedia returning a search error and asking me if I wasnt to use Google to search for what I'm looking for.
Diebold says the code is proprietary and does not allow public scrutiny of it.
Where did the government drop the ball on this one? IANAL, but it seems to me that the moment something enters into the arena of figuring our elections, it ought, by the very nature of things, enter into public scrutiny. Are we suppose to just bend over and accept anything the see fit to inflict upon us? The contracts in the first place should have been drawn to allow for a public audit of the code.
Support artists who don't bow down before the RIAA. There are people, like me, that only publish under Creative Commons and won't ever sign a record contract. Find them, listen to them, support them. Odds are they sound better than anything you'll find on the radio.
In theory, this seems the best way to go. The problem is that the majority of people need to be weaned off of the nipple of mainstream music. Where can people go to get such music? Part of evangilizing a boycott is helping people find an alternative. How about a radio station that only plays independent artists? Every once in a while I'll stumble upon an 'indie' artist that'll give away a few singles but want you to buy the rest. Why? Because they want to be a bigshot like the guys getting all the radio play and $$$. Unless the 'creative commons' artists are easily accessable and get the good exposure like the RIAA whores, their undiscovered status is not likely to change.
But how about 100% standards compliance on the CSS front? This goes for CSS1, CSS2, and the nearly complete CSS2.1. I'm quite sure with things going as they are, CSS3 ought to be available by the time Firefox 3.0 makes a debut.
Those who get the Longhorn Server hopefully aren't dopey attachment clickers, either. Remember who your audience is. As an admin, sure it would be nice if it asked me for the password, but passwords are another item on my checklist anyway. For those who are going to be administering the server, I see it as a non-issue.
It sure would be nice to get someone from MS to talk to. Someone who isn't going to sputter out marketing hype and techno babble. No, just geek to geek. I would have some down to earth questions to ask instead of listening to the echo chamber. I would ask some questions I haven't yet seen on this story in addition to some that people here are asking. Honest questions wanting some honest answers.
My questions would go something like this:
Microsoft, I think you got a pretty good OS and I know that you know you have one too, so let's cut the hype here and talk like normal (geek) folks instead of marketers. Now, your EULA obviously makes sense from your standpoint, but there a few of us out here scratching our heads. For example, some of us build our own machines and like to upgrade our parts fairly often. Now, when we purchase your OS, we expect that license to go with us as we make our 'rigs better. However, as I understand your license, we can install Vista and only really do one upgrade before our license goes up in smoke. From our viewpoint that really doesn't seem fair to have to spend an additional $300+ for the OS for doing something simple like upgrading a $150 motherboard, or adding an additional $100 of RAM. What options are there out there for those of us who would like to have Vista, but not substantially increase the cost of upgrading hardware? Is our market segment too small for you to worry about?
Some of us are developers and need a low cost solution to test our software against. As I understand the EULA, I won't be able to install Vista on a VM unless I buy one of the more pricier versions. I really feel like I've been painted into a corner here because buying a lesser version meets my needs as far development is concerned, but your EULA doesn't allow that. Did you take us into consideration when creating the EULA, and will any cheaper solutions exist for developing on your platform?
Etc, etc. Cmdr Taco, can you set something up??? Or are the Microsofties as repulsed by/. as Bill Clinton is to Bill O'Rielly?
I too went to a private university and found its Internet filtered all in the name of pornography. While I agree that people ought to be protected from things they don't wish to view, a proper balance need be struck between protection and education. The funny thing about the filtering is the most draconian filetering actually occured in the library. They not only filtered porn, but games, *search engines* (I kid you not), anything having to do with MP3, etc. Their justification for this blockage was 'to drive you to credible sources' ie. books and periodicles.
The result for me was that I never went to the library. I never checked books. I did all my research from home. It was irritating to say the least, but it was a lesson in diseducation.
I went to a state (public) university for a year and found things to be quite the opposite. The Internet was completely unfiltered. The only thing was a little slip taped to the monitor saying that if we were engaging in child pornography we would be prosocuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Those in the ancient Middle East did something similar with animal skins. They would simply set them out at night, and in the morning wring out the vast amount of dew that had collected.
Consider what a toll your finger joints would be taking over years of using this device. I'm willing to bet that the cartlidge in your joints would 'handily' be destroyed by hard, inflexible impacts on a desk-like surface over time.
See, this community bases everything off of a paradigm that everything ought to be free "as in libre". However, the current paradigm (which I admit is slowly shifting) is modeled around the though that information is worth money and power. Because there is secrecy surrounding the code that they use to guard their property, then they have control over how their property is used. They are able to make money off of it. This is their motive. This is how capitalism works.
They see releasing that information as a threat to their MO. They think that if they start handing this stuff out for free their turning into a bunch of commies. And even though this community knows that isn't true, it doesn't help using ad homonym attacks against them by calling them 'big fat liars'. It looks childish and immature.
As for emailing? I don't think they give hoot whether a few geeks boycott them because they don't get open source drivers, mostly because there will always be someone else who will buy their product without qualms. Only if someone like Dell dropped Intel for such reasons would they begin to notice. What would happen if Apple and HP dropped them too? Sure they would wake up. But you know why none of them will do that? Because, they operate under the same paradigm. And 99.99999999999% of their customer base doesn't care because (to them) it's irrelevant.
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We will add your binary and technological distinctiveness to our own. --the Borg
Nothing in life is gratis...
Absolutely, so to make things simple, maybe we can just go back to entering a manual IP address again...
I have posted a question for the IE interview and ask you, what keeps you from fully implementing the CSS 2.1 standard in FF 2? Granted, you adhere to the spec much better than IE, but this is not justification enough to not follow.
Håkon Wium Lie's response about IE not following spec is that it is not in their best interests as a monopoly to do so. MS's response to this question revolves around priority. What priority is standards compliance to Mozilla? Also, what other things do you think hinder compliance as far as Firefox is concerned?
Which is unfortunate. As a trilingual person (I guess you could add a dozen or more if counted computer languages) I have gained quite a richness of life and human understanding from learning another's language. There are many idomatic expressions that may seem a little funny initially, but after some thought, really seem to make you look at the world in a different way.
For example, in the Mayan language K'ekchi', the term "Ma cuan sa' a ch'ol xbanunquil _________?", literial translates to mean Is it in your heart to do _________? which idiomatically means, "Are you willing to do ________?".
By not learning another's language, you lose an opportunity to look at the world through the 'eyes' of that language.
I work at a company where if you take classes on campus you get a binder called a manual, which is primarily composed of printed out powerpoint slides. This makes for a useless 'manual' inclass, let alone outside. There's no index, no contents, usually just a few tabs to seperate sections.
If I had to choose, I would prefer a higher quality doc than a digital one.
Assuming that usable means something more than chrome and cosmetics. I switched to Firefox not because it was prettier, 'easier to use', or because I'm anti-Microsoft. I, and many, many others have switched to Firefox because of security. I know beyond a shadow of doubt that no ActiveX malware will infect my machine because of use of Firefox. Security in and of itself ought to be the reason people switch to Firefox.
In what way is it worse? Let's try and qualify and quantify your complaint. Are you complaining that viewing the source is plain old text with no keyword highlighting? Is it worse because it opens inside notepad? Are you complaining that you can't make updated changes to the markup? C'mon! These are suppose to be questions that you're asking the person. If I were the one being presented this question, I'd ask in what way is it worse. But since there is no way to ask for clarification, I would discard it.
This past summer Håkon Wium Lie was interviewed on /. and my question was selected concerning IE7's glaring lack of full CSS support. Why is it that MS has avoided meeting at least the ACID2 spec for CSS in order to bring some semblance of comformity for developers?
Håkon Wium Lie's response to these questions is boiled down to the fact that you do have the talent and resources to fix these issues and he says that "the fundamental reason, I believe, is that standards don't benefit monopolists" like MS.
How do you respond to his comments (the author of the CSS spec) and does MS have any near future plans to adhere to the existing CSS standard? If not, what would it take for MS to take a more proactive role in supporting it?
I would suggest the money should be used instead to support a powerful well-funded lobbying effort for copyright reform...
I disagree. While $100 million is no laughable chunk o' change, its effectiveness is somewhat doubtful. Buying the rights to publish copyrighted works for all to use would have the most immediate (and gauranteed) benefit to those not just in the US, but all around the world.
I think reforming copyright is a futile effort at the present time. This isn't to say that it isn't worth worrying about, there just needs to be a more substantial and tangible reason than currently exists in order to move the politicians.
That's what you get for being a one trick pony. Eventually competitors move in to dilute market share or you run into an antiquation problem where your product is obsolete/useless. While some may bitch that this is another way of Microsoft consolidating their monopoly power, this change has been a long time coming. What else does McAffee do? Symantec has many different types of tools like backup software and disk repair utilities, but what else?
Take a look at Creative. At one point the realized that the Sound Blaster brand was not going to get them very far once generic sound cards found their way into every PC that gets manufactured. What did they do? Well, they gave graphics cards a try. I remember back in the 90s when you could get a Voodoo2 chipset from them. Now? They were one of the first to enter the MP3 player markets and continue to have *some* success despite Apple dominating that arena.
Get a life McAffee and Symantec, your days of being a market bottom feeder are coming to an end.
I really think that the judge realized that more was at stake than just SPAM. It has set an important precedant regarding the Internet and jurisdiction. Even though the US controls most of it, it is important to realize that the Internet is an ethereal place without solid jurisdictional boundaries. If the judge had signed away on pulling the domain name, it would have casted a devastating taint on how Law treats 'where' the Interent exactly is.
So I end up using Google one way or another. I almost always end up with Wikipedia returning a search error and asking me if I wasnt to use Google to search for what I'm looking for.
Diebold says the code is proprietary and does not allow public scrutiny of it.
Where did the government drop the ball on this one? IANAL, but it seems to me that the moment something enters into the arena of figuring our elections, it ought, by the very nature of things, enter into public scrutiny. Are we suppose to just bend over and accept anything the see fit to inflict upon us? The contracts in the first place should have been drawn to allow for a public audit of the code.
"I've got a bad feeling about this..."
So we can learn to pick ourselves up.
Support artists who don't bow down before the RIAA. There are people, like me, that only publish under Creative Commons and won't ever sign a record contract. Find them, listen to them, support them. Odds are they sound better than anything you'll find on the radio.
In theory, this seems the best way to go. The problem is that the majority of people need to be weaned off of the nipple of mainstream music. Where can people go to get such music? Part of evangilizing a boycott is helping people find an alternative. How about a radio station that only plays independent artists? Every once in a while I'll stumble upon an 'indie' artist that'll give away a few singles but want you to buy the rest. Why? Because they want to be a bigshot like the guys getting all the radio play and $$$. Unless the 'creative commons' artists are easily accessable and get the good exposure like the RIAA whores, their undiscovered status is not likely to change.
Cool! Laser beams! Ra ta ta ta ta!
But how about 100% standards compliance on the CSS front? This goes for CSS1, CSS2, and the nearly complete CSS2.1. I'm quite sure with things going as they are, CSS3 ought to be available by the time Firefox 3.0 makes a debut.
Those who get the Longhorn Server hopefully aren't dopey attachment clickers, either. Remember who your audience is. As an admin, sure it would be nice if it asked me for the password, but passwords are another item on my checklist anyway. For those who are going to be administering the server, I see it as a non-issue.
It sure would be nice to get someone from MS to talk to. Someone who isn't going to sputter out marketing hype and techno babble. No, just geek to geek. I would have some down to earth questions to ask instead of listening to the echo chamber. I would ask some questions I haven't yet seen on this story in addition to some that people here are asking. Honest questions wanting some honest answers.
/. as Bill Clinton is to Bill O'Rielly?
My questions would go something like this:
Microsoft, I think you got a pretty good OS and I know that you know you have one too, so let's cut the hype here and talk like normal (geek) folks instead of marketers. Now, your EULA obviously makes sense from your standpoint, but there a few of us out here scratching our heads. For example, some of us build our own machines and like to upgrade our parts fairly often. Now, when we purchase your OS, we expect that license to go with us as we make our 'rigs better. However, as I understand your license, we can install Vista and only really do one upgrade before our license goes up in smoke. From our viewpoint that really doesn't seem fair to have to spend an additional $300+ for the OS for doing something simple like upgrading a $150 motherboard, or adding an additional $100 of RAM. What options are there out there for those of us who would like to have Vista, but not substantially increase the cost of upgrading hardware? Is our market segment too small for you to worry about?
Some of us are developers and need a low cost solution to test our software against. As I understand the EULA, I won't be able to install Vista on a VM unless I buy one of the more pricier versions. I really feel like I've been painted into a corner here because buying a lesser version meets my needs as far development is concerned, but your EULA doesn't allow that. Did you take us into consideration when creating the EULA, and will any cheaper solutions exist for developing on your platform?
Etc, etc. Cmdr Taco, can you set something up??? Or are the Microsofties as repulsed by
I too went to a private university and found its Internet filtered all in the name of pornography. While I agree that people ought to be protected from things they don't wish to view, a proper balance need be struck between protection and education. The funny thing about the filtering is the most draconian filetering actually occured in the library. They not only filtered porn, but games, *search engines* (I kid you not), anything having to do with MP3, etc. Their justification for this blockage was 'to drive you to credible sources' ie. books and periodicles.
The result for me was that I never went to the library. I never checked books. I did all my research from home. It was irritating to say the least, but it was a lesson in diseducation.
I went to a state (public) university for a year and found things to be quite the opposite. The Internet was completely unfiltered. The only thing was a little slip taped to the monitor saying that if we were engaging in child pornography we would be prosocuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Those in the ancient Middle East did something similar with animal skins. They would simply set them out at night, and in the morning wring out the vast amount of dew that had collected.
Consider what a toll your finger joints would be taking over years of using this device. I'm willing to bet that the cartlidge in your joints would 'handily' be destroyed by hard, inflexible impacts on a desk-like surface over time.
See, this community bases everything off of a paradigm that everything ought to be free "as in libre". However, the current paradigm (which I admit is slowly shifting) is modeled around the though that information is worth money and power. Because there is secrecy surrounding the code that they use to guard their property, then they have control over how their property is used. They are able to make money off of it. This is their motive. This is how capitalism works.
They see releasing that information as a threat to their MO. They think that if they start handing this stuff out for free their turning into a bunch of commies. And even though this community knows that isn't true, it doesn't help using ad homonym attacks against them by calling them 'big fat liars'. It looks childish and immature.
As for emailing? I don't think they give hoot whether a few geeks boycott them because they don't get open source drivers, mostly because there will always be someone else who will buy their product without qualms. Only if someone like Dell dropped Intel for such reasons would they begin to notice. What would happen if Apple and HP dropped them too? Sure they would wake up. But you know why none of them will do that? Because, they operate under the same paradigm. And 99.99999999999% of their customer base doesn't care because (to them) it's irrelevant.