I think the "who actually uses it" argument is a good one. As a web developer I have installed IE6, Fx1.1 and O8 and I test on all. I think Opera 8 is a great browser, especially since it's the first to support native SVG rendering, but my regular browser is still Firefox, as I find the ads in O8 at the top distracting.
Of course, this little snippet from Opera isn't a response to the enormous success of Firefox at all, is it? Opera is envious of how Firefox became the darling of the internet community and threads like this prove that they still don't understand why (hint: clean, crisp interface and a lot of word of mouth)
It's odd that the CEO of a for-profit company whines that they don't have a not-for-profit "sugar-daddy" like MoFo. Who funds MoFo? Isn't it a not-for-profit company (I'm not sure if AOL still does any funding there)?
It's also odd that they are whining about setting the user string agent to IE's when they are doing it to themselves.
I think Foley is just fishing for controversy here:
"Longhorn won't be based on the.Net Framework."
"...the.Net Framework will be the core for a small subset of Longhorn, specifically the WAP (Windows API Platform), which consists primarily of the "Avalon" Windows presentation system and the "Indigo" Windows communications system."
But Avalon and Indigo are subsets of Longhorn. So.Net IS INDEED at the core of a subset of Longhorn.
I guess the question is: Did someone believe that EVERY SINGLE PIECE of the next Windows OS would be based on.NET? i.e. a complete redesign of every single facet of the OS from the ground up? That would be an incredibly risky gamble on Microsoft's part wouldn't it? Does everyone remember what happened to Netscape when it decided to scrap its codebase and start from scratch?
http://www.mcomi.com/EN/17/technologies/softdev.ht ml
"Netscape had used Mercurial for a smaller project in the past, and based on that positive experience, chose them as a development partner for the Netscape 8.0 browser release. They did an excellent job, working under short deadlines and with complex requirements. Mercurial was a source of product innovation, as well as an excellent development shop. As a result of this experience, a number of other divisions of AOL are contracting with Mercurial for further work."
Jeremy Liew, GM, Netscape.com
(a division of AOL)
I guess Jeremy is now thinking "where's that Backspace button?"
I had one of those Cheap and Crappy (TM) Western Digital USB drives fail on me after THIRTEEN months. Guess how long the warranty was: TWELVE months! After being casually rebuffed by customer support I vowed never to buy another WD drive (even an internal one).
I go with SCSI now. SCSI boot drives are amazing. My C: drive is a 18 GB, Seagate Cheetah (15krpm) that's four years old and my D: drive is a 72 GB IBM/Hitachi 10krpm. I use both extensively for intensive applications (like video capture, encoding) and have never had a problem with SCSI so far (though you pay a premium for it).
Personally I wish SSD could be made for the masses, but sadly they would probably suffer from the same quality issues that cheap platter drives do nowadays. Just like everything that's commoditized.
Anyway, check out http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-buyers-guide.html if you're looking for some info on SSD. Note that prices are not included because no manufacturer wants you to know how bloody expensive these things are until they can real you in with an email or telephone call.
Flash memory can only be written to a finite number of times.
Is my disk-drive just going to stop working at some point?
As someone else mentioned, all hard drives eventually fail. Even SCSI drives. It's a mechanical device and all mechanical devices eventually fail.
You realize that the slowest device in your system is the hard drive, right? You realize that your hard drive and your optical drive are the only moving parts in your computer and thus, are more prone to failure?
If you want to keep using a mechanical device in this day and age, be my guest. But to me, this seems to be a step towards solid state drives for the masses and I applaud the move.
"If stardardization is truly important (as many make it seem in the case of MS) than why not wait until it gets specified in a standard and then implement that standard?"
Um, it ___IS___ in a standard. SVG has been a W3C standard for several years now, we are just starting to see native browser support for it (Opera and Firefox).
"This case shows that high-tech price-fixing cartels will not be tolerated"
But oil cartels? Bring it on...I'm paying $2.30/gallon out here in the midwest...
Yup, I couldn't agree more. This all boils down to money (which is a disservice to those "creative" people out there who just feel the need to create, but that's the way the cookie crumbles).
It's a big problem with no simple solution. The real problem is trying to put a container around ideas and concepts and calling them "Intellectual Property". But that's what the Information Age taught us: Ideas are extremely, extremely Valuable.
Protection for IP is in place to give monetary incentive to people (or corporations) to create things (in order to drive the economy, make the world a better place, etc).
If I create something useful, it would be nice if I get compensated for my efforts. If I create something really popular, it stands to reason that I would be compensated on a relative scale. If I create something and someone comes along and steals all my ideas and makes a fortune on them, that's an injustice.
If there were ZERO IP laws, then you favor those with the big bucks. Simple: steal some idea, market it as your own and drive everyone out of business. Corporations would chase away any monetary incentive to create something and artists/developers would only be left with "personal pride" as a motivator.
Unfortunately, "personal pride" does not put food on the table. Thus, you definitely need IP Laws in order to police the soulless corporations who only see dollar signs.
Just off the top of my head, I feel that corporations should not be allowed to own IP. It doesn't feel "right" to me. Corporations are soulless, mindless entities with money, they cannot actually CREATE. What I mean is, only the ACTUAL creators (i.e. people) would be able to own the IP and (as employees) could license it exclusively to their employer for a maximum of 2 years (or some reasonably small number).
This still gives corporations incentive to fund research and secure the IP, and get a product out before competitors, but it reduces some of the incentive to blindly secure IP wherever they can.
When the "exclusive" term is up, the actual creator(s) can market the IP anywhere (including to their employer) but it can never be "exclusive", meaning if a competitor is willing to pay the license to the employee, the IP owner cannot refuse. They can even release it to the public domain.
I know this doesn't actually solve the bigger problem but it feels like a step in the right direction to me anyway.
Yep, I'll agree with that. The article states that the new formats are coming out by end of year, so at 7-months and counting this is a token gesture at best.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the "who actually uses it" argument is a good one. As a web developer I have installed IE6, Fx1.1 and O8 and I test on all. I think Opera 8 is a great browser, especially since it's the first to support native SVG rendering, but my regular browser is still Firefox, as I find the ads in O8 at the top distracting.
Of course, this little snippet from Opera isn't a response to the enormous success of Firefox at all, is it? Opera is envious of how Firefox became the darling of the internet community and threads like this prove that they still don't understand why (hint: clean, crisp interface and a lot of word of mouth)
It's odd that the CEO of a for-profit company whines that they don't have a not-for-profit "sugar-daddy" like MoFo. Who funds MoFo? Isn't it a not-for-profit company (I'm not sure if AOL still does any funding there)?
It's also odd that they are whining about setting the user string agent to IE's when they are doing it to themselves.
It's not *always* a bad idea to start over.
I think it is *always* a bad idea to start over from scratch when you currently dominate the market and want to continue to do so: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog00000000 69.html
Yes, I can't wait to see what /. posts to top this...I guess Mary Jo is really to blame though. I found this talkback comment amusing: http://www.eweek.com/talkback_details/0,2278,s=259 84&a=152824,00.asp?m=8123
I think Foley is just fishing for controversy here:
.Net Framework."
.Net Framework will be the core for a small subset of Longhorn, specifically the WAP (Windows API Platform), which consists primarily of the "Avalon" Windows presentation system and the "Indigo" Windows communications system."
.Net IS INDEED at the core of a subset of Longhorn.
.NET? i.e. a complete redesign of every single facet of the OS from the ground up? That would be an incredibly risky gamble on Microsoft's part wouldn't it? Does everyone remember what happened to Netscape when it decided to scrap its codebase and start from scratch?
"Longhorn won't be based on the
"...the
But Avalon and Indigo are subsets of Longhorn. So
I guess the question is: Did someone believe that EVERY SINGLE PIECE of the next Windows OS would be based on
That's nothing new. Check out Ben Goodger's assessment of NS8: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/008180 .html
When something goes wrong, of course the other team is going to crow a little...
Why don't you post her link?
Well, I reported it in my Blog anyway: http://blog.codedread.com/archives/2005/05/25/nets cape-8-breaks-internet-explorer-6/
So nyah!
http://www.mcomi.com/EN/17/technologies/softdev.ht ml
"Netscape had used Mercurial for a smaller project in the past, and based on that positive experience, chose them as a development partner for the Netscape 8.0 browser release. They did an excellent job, working under short deadlines and with complex requirements. Mercurial was a source of product innovation, as well as an excellent development shop. As a result of this experience, a number of other divisions of AOL are contracting with Mercurial for further work."
Jeremy Liew, GM, Netscape.com
(a division of AOL)
I guess Jeremy is now thinking "where's that Backspace button?"
According to someone in the IE Blog, AOL "outsourced development of NS8 to a company called Mercurial Communications. "
Hm, I tried to report this story yesterday and it was rejected. Go figure...
I had one of those Cheap and Crappy (TM) Western Digital USB drives fail on me after THIRTEEN months. Guess how long the warranty was: TWELVE months! After being casually rebuffed by customer support I vowed never to buy another WD drive (even an internal one).
I go with SCSI now. SCSI boot drives are amazing. My C: drive is a 18 GB, Seagate Cheetah (15krpm) that's four years old and my D: drive is a 72 GB IBM/Hitachi 10krpm. I use both extensively for intensive applications (like video capture, encoding) and have never had a problem with SCSI so far (though you pay a premium for it).
Personally I wish SSD could be made for the masses, but sadly they would probably suffer from the same quality issues that cheap platter drives do nowadays. Just like everything that's commoditized. Anyway, check out http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-buyers-guide.html if you're looking for some info on SSD. Note that prices are not included because no manufacturer wants you to know how bloody expensive these things are until they can real you in with an email or telephone call.
As someone else mentioned, all hard drives eventually fail. Even SCSI drives. It's a mechanical device and all mechanical devices eventually fail. You realize that the slowest device in your system is the hard drive, right? You realize that your hard drive and your optical drive are the only moving parts in your computer and thus, are more prone to failure? If you want to keep using a mechanical device in this day and age, be my guest. But to me, this seems to be a step towards solid state drives for the masses and I applaud the move.
"If stardardization is truly important (as many make it seem in the case of MS) than why not wait until it gets specified in a standard and then implement that standard?" Um, it ___IS___ in a standard. SVG has been a W3C standard for several years now, we are just starting to see native browser support for it (Opera and Firefox).
"This case shows that high-tech price-fixing cartels will not be tolerated" But oil cartels? Bring it on...I'm paying $2.30/gallon out here in the midwest...
LOL....if I had mod points, you'd get some.
Yup, I couldn't agree more. This all boils down to money (which is a disservice to those "creative" people out there who just feel the need to create, but that's the way the cookie crumbles).
It's a big problem with no simple solution. The real problem is trying to put a container around ideas and concepts and calling them "Intellectual Property". But that's what the Information Age taught us: Ideas are extremely, extremely Valuable.
Protection for IP is in place to give monetary incentive to people (or corporations) to create things (in order to drive the economy, make the world a better place, etc).
If I create something useful, it would be nice if I get compensated for my efforts. If I create something really popular, it stands to reason that I would be compensated on a relative scale. If I create something and someone comes along and steals all my ideas and makes a fortune on them, that's an injustice.
If there were ZERO IP laws, then you favor those with the big bucks. Simple: steal some idea, market it as your own and drive everyone out of business. Corporations would chase away any monetary incentive to create something and artists/developers would only be left with "personal pride" as a motivator.
Unfortunately, "personal pride" does not put food on the table. Thus, you definitely need IP Laws in order to police the soulless corporations who only see dollar signs.
Just off the top of my head, I feel that corporations should not be allowed to own IP. It doesn't feel "right" to me. Corporations are soulless, mindless entities with money, they cannot actually CREATE. What I mean is, only the ACTUAL creators (i.e. people) would be able to own the IP and (as employees) could license it exclusively to their employer for a maximum of 2 years (or some reasonably small number).
This still gives corporations incentive to fund research and secure the IP, and get a product out before competitors, but it reduces some of the incentive to blindly secure IP wherever they can.
When the "exclusive" term is up, the actual creator(s) can market the IP anywhere (including to their employer) but it can never be "exclusive", meaning if a competitor is willing to pay the license to the employee, the IP owner cannot refuse. They can even release it to the public domain.
I know this doesn't actually solve the bigger problem but it feels like a step in the right direction to me anyway.
...so goes the soap opera that has become the Linux community
Yep, I'll agree with that. The article states that the new formats are coming out by end of year, so at 7-months and counting this is a token gesture at best.