I know it's all too easy for people to automatically assume some sort of corruption or greed is the explanation for any given "you can't do that!" answer from a big business... but in this case, there is a far less complicated answer which I think is clearly more plausible: Apple's App Store guidelines forbid emulators for both performance and security reasons. The quickest method for a Steam port of existing Windows games over to iOS would be to emulate some portion of the functionality, just as they've done (by way of Cider, for example) for quite a few of their MacOS game ports over the years.
Thus, while Steam on iOS would seem on the surface to be an easy win for both Valve and Apple, it's going to take some serious recoding for Valve to fall completely in line with Apple's current App Store guidelines -- and that doesn't come cheap, which is why they used emulation in the first place for those previous ports. So Valve is no doubt quietly advocating for a change in Apple's policies, in order to get the iOS version of Steam rolled out with minimal recoding... but opening up iOS to emulators really would be an incredible can of worms, and as I see it, Apple probably just isn't interested in taking on that kind of risk.
But... that sort of explanation is kind'a boring and doesn't really play well in the press -- especially from Valve's point of view. It sounds much more interesting to make Apple out to be the greedy bully, who just wants more easy money... and as can be demonstrated by many of the comments in this thread, gamers enthusiastically eat up that crap. And of course, Apple doesn't generally publicize the reasons for specific store submission denials, out of deference to the privacy concerns of the app developers... so for the moment, we're really only hearing one side of the story.
Hopefully, in time, Apple will make some statement that will provide us with "the rest of the story," as Paul Harvey used to say.
And than there are those of us (like me) who have largely lost the ability to hear certain frequencies, over the years. From my childhood and into at least my teen years, I could hear a constant high-pitched whistle emitting from any CRT screen from the very second it was flipped on, and until it was powered down again. Loud and clear. From another room. Across the entire damned house. It was actually quite annoying... but I'm pretty sure my parents didn't entirely believe me, because, well, they couldn't hear it. Fast forward to today, and I have to move over to within inches of an old television to hear that same noise. (But, like the skeleton, "I remember...")
So really, I view this "Yanny/Laurel" thing as just a slight variation on the old Mosquito noise trick based on that same premise, that teens sometimes used as adult-proof ringtones and adults sometimes use to drive away annoying kids. Kind'a makes me wonder how long it'll be before people start making even more sophisticated "Mosquito" messages, which say one thing to adults and something else entirely to kids... High pitched poop jokes, maybe? Directives to get-off-my-lawn?
Security vulnerabilities are a fact of life, and most people in any kind of a technology job are aware of that. It's not if you're going to be hacked, but when, and by who. And in fact, it's not these highly publicized breaches that we really need to worry about; rather, it's the breaches that nobody ever finds out that probably keeps the security experts awake at night. So if some well-meaning script-kiddie stumbled his way into Securus, than what that really tells us, is that someone with nefarious intent has almost certainly already exploited the same weakness well prior to this. Nobody found out about that hack* for two reasons: 1) The "real" hackers covered their tracks and didn't get caught, and 2) they didn't notify the press with childlike glee of their successful hack of a highly sought after target... rather, they used the vulnerability to collect as much data as possible, and hid any strategically useful data that they discovered under a rock, to be sold to the highest bidder on the black market.
* Mind you... "that hack" could just as easily have been "those hacks"... and we likely still wouldn't know it happened, nor how extensive the damage was, until it's too late to fix anything.
... allegedly breached the embassy's network security, reading confidential diplomatic material and setting up his own secret communications network....
Rough translation: Assange found that little placard with the WiFi password written on it for all to freely use, discovered an open share on one of the embassy's network-connected computers (but probably didn't find anything particularly interesting on it) and then he casually turned on his VPN to tunnel through the embassy firewall and log into Wikileaks.
It feels to me like certain high profile personalities in the media (like Assange, but certainly not limited to him) are all-too-often treated like they possess some sort of super-intelligence, and can do shockingly amazing things with computers. The reality is likely to be underwhelming most of the time, when you break down the colorful but vague terminology into layman's terms.
That article serves no purpose in this context, unless for some reason you're attempting to deflect from or minimize the detrimental impacts of Microsoft's poor decision making in this situation. Certainly you could be pedantic and argue that Microsoft isn't technically exhibiting insanity so much as they are exhibiting "perseveration" behaviors... but that distinction offers no particular benefit to the discussion, and only serves to confuse people.
Sometimes "cute sayings" are quite adequately descriptive enough to illustrate the point.
Microsoft has added various scripting languages to their Office products over the years... and each and every one has been abused by bad actors at some point, forcing Microsoft to cripple and/or remove the capability. What on earth could possibly make Microsoft think that adding JavaScript to Office documents will be any different? Particularly since it has already been abused in a myriad of ways within web browsers??
As the old saying goes, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results."
Thank you for looking up the patent. Based upon that priority date of 2012, and the incredible specificity of the patent, I tend to wonder if perhaps Nintendo could win this based upon prior art for the various sub-components, as I don't see how you can justify a patent which basically amounts to putting Widget A (which has prior art) alongside Widget B (which also has prior art). If the patent amounts solely to combining the two, than that's not much of an innovation; that's just an intuitively logical progression.
As an example, this is one of the toys from the 70s, which I remember playing with when I was a kid: Tandy home pong game. There's the connected controller "Widget" right there.
Seems like the priorities are usually roughly as follows:
- Identify the competition (done: Microsoft Outlook.)
- Copy every single feature available in the competition (done... erm... mostly)
- Make changes to some other random crap, so people don't immediately recognize that this was all just an exercise in feature parity (done)
- Make the product mesh with all the rest of our products, and actually look good. (incomplete)
Though, as a developer myself, I kind'a feel like that last bullet is almost never completed... someone in the management team always wants us to change some more random crap, so we never really have enough time to make things look good, let alone consistent.
I've lost count... how many times has T-Mobile tried to merge with another carrier? And so far, hasn't each and every attempt been rebuffed by antitrust concerns?
* Gong farmers -- Who literally collected dog crap from people's yards, to re-purpose as fertilizer.
* Ice cutters -- As in, that guy in Frozen, whose job was apparently pretty dangerous, as it turns out.
* Knocker ups -- A distinctly boring job which consisted of knocking on doors and windows to wake people up... which was replaced by the lowly alarm clock.
* Lamplighters -- Who probably weren't all that happy about the invention of electric light-bulbs -- so we should all do our part to save their jobs, and shutdown everything we own that uses electricity to produce light, right? Right? Bueller?
* Leech collectors -- Who worked for (ahem!) "doctors". Now, let's just be honest; surely we're all glad that doctors don't use leeches anymore, right?
* Buggy Whip maker -- I would hope that we all recognize this reference by now.
* Weather Balloon Launchers -- and there we are.
So, ummm... why is anybody upset about this, again?
Personally, I'm not overly impressed by the changes... but those changes aren't so horrible as to make me want to run away and hide in the old interface, either. In fact, the only difference which seems even remotely noteworthy to me, is that the entire interface appears to have become ever so slightly more sluggish -- but even that isn't horrific; it's just mildly annoying. The reality is, the new interface is going to be rolled out to all Gmail users eventually anyway, likely with little or no change from the current state... and ultimately, we'll all just get used to it. Eventually.
But honestly, this feels to me like nothing more than an exercise in change for it's own sake. Basically, they had one or two minor new features which they wanted to roll into the interface, but instead of just shoehorning them into the existing interface -- which almost certainly would have worked just fine -- they decided to use this as an excuse to throw a whole new coat of paint at a wall that really only had a few scratches that nobody even noticed anymore -- except of course for the guy who threw that original coat of paint on, eons ago. (Little known fact of life: That old adage about artists being their own worst critic can be equally applied to just about every skilled worker, anywhere.) And of course, everyone knows that any good interior designer never lets their client choose the same color scheme that they already had... the designer has to justify their sky-high invoice at the end of the day, after all! ("I've got it! Let's change everything from yellow to cyan! Trust me -- I promise it'll be fantastic!")
In addition, the developers who had spent countless hours implementing scads of features that are never used, have doubtless been pressuring those designers to help them justify their existence, as well. (All of us old-timers have seen the results of that quite a few times, in the form of the various feature reshuffles which have been thrust upon Microsoft Office users. "Hey -- what's this button? Is it a new feature?" "Huh? Oh... nah. I've used that feature a couple of times before. It's really not as useful as you might think, though...") The all-too-predictable results are, the new Gmail interface compresses and de-emphasizes features that most people use on a daily basis, expands (and surfaces) a few features that very few people care about or will ever use, alongside squeezing in those one or two actual new features... that last of which had in reality driven the entire venture in the first place.
But I think it very plausible that the people working there don't have a goal of "dominate the market", but instead feel well-motivated/validated by being the org that keeps the other players honest.
It seems to me that there is a pretty big differences between keeping other players "honest" and suggesting to the government that other players will need to be broken up, in order to make them honest.
[You seem to be]... Saying that they must remember being the top browser proves that they're resentful now and that said resentment drove the construction of their report. You have not evidenced that one bit....
I suppose I did not explicitly offer up certain details which support my point of view, because I felt they had already been voiced adequately enough in the original article and in the Shashdot summary. Don't you think that Mozilla is demonstrating a clear and unadulterated bias, specifically by advising the government to step in and rip to pieces those other mega-corporations with which Mozilla can no longer compete on equal footing? That type of advice, coupled with the fact that Mozilla used to behave in much the same manner themselves, is evidence enough in my opinion. Even if you disagree with my conclusions, you would have to acknowledge that their clear conflict of interest in the matter leaves a great deal of room to question their credibility. Mind you, I'm actually posting this from within Firefox, myself... but the very notion that their leadership is presently attempting to present themselves as an "unbiased and altruistic voice," and yet they are still offering up this rather extreme advice, shreds any remaining faith I might have once had in them. It's undeniable that we all have personal biases, and I firmly believe that anyone who tries to convince you that they hold to no biases at all is almost certainly trying to sell you a bill of goods.
In any case, it's probably moot; even if people in a position to take action actually wanted to follow Mozilla's proposed course, they probably wouldn't bother bringing it before the courts, because frankly there is even less chance of the US government actually breaking up any one of these companies today, than there was of them breaking up Microsoft back-in-the-day, even though that seemed about as close to a slam-dunk as any modern-day monopolistic practices court case could get... and I suppose we all know how that turned out.
Touché. Apologies, I was in a mood. Your humorous response is appreciated.
I entirely understand; we all have bad days, now and than. (Still don't want to copulate with you, though... I mean, we haven't even had drinks yet! Come to think of it, I suppose my wife might also take exception to the notion...)
There's a big difference between offering no evidence at all, and offering evidence which you deem to be inadequate, for some reason.
As for my theory as to the motivations: Did you read the linked article at all, or view any of the pages on the so-called "internet health report" website? I'll just point you to a single pertinent page on the site, wherein we find Mozilla themselves essentially putting forth the very argument that you just discounted: Google dominates browser market. On that page, the Mozilla writers comment on the potential impact which Chrome's dominance can have on the overall market. In particular:
... A lesser known effect of Google’s dominance is that the company has the power to define and implement features of how the Web works for everyone, no matter which browser they use – for instance, through the Web standards process. This is an unfortunate vector of competition, because Google can push for standards or formats that other browsers can’t or don’t want to deliver on....
If you know enough about the history of the internet, you might recognize that this statement very closely parallels the state of affairs, from back when Netscape was the dominant browser. For a decent period of time, all other browsers were desperately trying to play catch-up, while Netscape developers introduced new "standard features" one right after another. In some small ways, the impact of Netscape's former dominance (and by extension, those catch-up efforts) can still be felt even today; just take a quick look at the user agent for your browser.
So frankly, if you genuinely believe that the current regime over at the Mozilla Foundation has absolutely no memory at all of those "glory days," than I'd suggest that maybe you're discounting human nature a bit too much. We are all prone to reflect upon our past successes, now and than; that's just a given. It seems to me that one of the "measures of a man" could be found in how you deal with the passing of those successes: do you gripe about someone else who has managed to pick up the torch that you've now lost? Or do you celebrate their victory with them, and congratulate them for carrying the torch forward to the next landmark?
Clearly, in at least this instance, the folks at Mozilla are not doing the latter.
(Also, no... I have no desire to copulate with you. Have a nice day!)
Certainly there are other ways... but that doesn't necessarily make this way wrong. The "rules" of proper usage of punctuation and grammar are prone to change over the course of time, in any "living" language. To illustrate: were Shakespeare to pop his head through the veil and contemplate this (or really any) conversation, he would almost certainly be entirely unconvinced that anyone living today has even the vaguest notion of proper punctuation, grammar or spelling.
The reversed order in this type of scenario is used to redirect the emphasis of the headline to the latter subject. That is to say, the structure of the title herein is directing the readers attention to the fact that the Mozilla Foundation is specifically the party which holds these views... rather than attempting to focus the readers attention on the views themselves. This type of literary tool can be useful when the author does not necessarily hold with the views and opinions expressed by the subject.
It really sounds to me like the few people still remaining at the Mozilla Foundation are expressing some passive aggressive bitterness, over their own loss of prominence in the market. Firefox (and even more-so, Netscape before it) was once a genuine player in the browser market, but now they've been relegated by most measurements to a weak second (or third) in the desktop market, and a veritable non-entity in the mobile market.
You had your heyday, Mozilla, but that's in the past and the digital world has changed in several strong leaps and bounds, since that time. Regardless of what you think the reasons were, there's not really much point in griping about the guys who now have what you lost... and no amount of finger pointing and gesticulating is going to change that.
You're describing an idyllic world, in which I would love to live and work. I've been around long enough, that experience tells me that I'm describing an all too common reality. Unfortunately.
Slashdot Mirror
I know it's all too easy for people to automatically assume some sort of corruption or greed is the explanation for any given "you can't do that!" answer from a big business... but in this case, there is a far less complicated answer which I think is clearly more plausible: Apple's App Store guidelines forbid emulators for both performance and security reasons. The quickest method for a Steam port of existing Windows games over to iOS would be to emulate some portion of the functionality, just as they've done (by way of Cider, for example) for quite a few of their MacOS game ports over the years.
Thus, while Steam on iOS would seem on the surface to be an easy win for both Valve and Apple, it's going to take some serious recoding for Valve to fall completely in line with Apple's current App Store guidelines -- and that doesn't come cheap, which is why they used emulation in the first place for those previous ports. So Valve is no doubt quietly advocating for a change in Apple's policies, in order to get the iOS version of Steam rolled out with minimal recoding... but opening up iOS to emulators really would be an incredible can of worms, and as I see it, Apple probably just isn't interested in taking on that kind of risk.
But... that sort of explanation is kind'a boring and doesn't really play well in the press -- especially from Valve's point of view. It sounds much more interesting to make Apple out to be the greedy bully, who just wants more easy money... and as can be demonstrated by many of the comments in this thread, gamers enthusiastically eat up that crap. And of course, Apple doesn't generally publicize the reasons for specific store submission denials, out of deference to the privacy concerns of the app developers... so for the moment, we're really only hearing one side of the story.
Hopefully, in time, Apple will make some statement that will provide us with "the rest of the story," as Paul Harvey used to say.
And than there are those of us (like me) who have largely lost the ability to hear certain frequencies, over the years. From my childhood and into at least my teen years, I could hear a constant high-pitched whistle emitting from any CRT screen from the very second it was flipped on, and until it was powered down again. Loud and clear. From another room. Across the entire damned house. It was actually quite annoying... but I'm pretty sure my parents didn't entirely believe me, because, well, they couldn't hear it. Fast forward to today, and I have to move over to within inches of an old television to hear that same noise. (But, like the skeleton, "I remember...")
So really, I view this "Yanny/Laurel" thing as just a slight variation on the old Mosquito noise trick based on that same premise, that teens sometimes used as adult-proof ringtones and adults sometimes use to drive away annoying kids. Kind'a makes me wonder how long it'll be before people start making even more sophisticated "Mosquito" messages, which say one thing to adults and something else entirely to kids... High pitched poop jokes, maybe? Directives to get-off-my-lawn?
Yes-siree, the future sure is bright...
Security vulnerabilities are a fact of life, and most people in any kind of a technology job are aware of that. It's not if you're going to be hacked, but when, and by who. And in fact, it's not these highly publicized breaches that we really need to worry about; rather, it's the breaches that nobody ever finds out that probably keeps the security experts awake at night. So if some well-meaning script-kiddie stumbled his way into Securus, than what that really tells us, is that someone with nefarious intent has almost certainly already exploited the same weakness well prior to this. Nobody found out about that hack* for two reasons: 1) The "real" hackers covered their tracks and didn't get caught, and 2) they didn't notify the press with childlike glee of their successful hack of a highly sought after target... rather, they used the vulnerability to collect as much data as possible, and hid any strategically useful data that they discovered under a rock, to be sold to the highest bidder on the black market.
* Mind you... "that hack" could just as easily have been "those hacks"... and we likely still wouldn't know it happened, nor how extensive the damage was, until it's too late to fix anything.
Great scene... and now I have a sudden urge to go home and watch the movie again. (Oh, but if only I could up-vote comments in my own thread...)
... allegedly breached the embassy's network security, reading confidential diplomatic material and setting up his own secret communications network. ...
Rough translation: Assange found that little placard with the WiFi password written on it for all to freely use, discovered an open share on one of the embassy's network-connected computers (but probably didn't find anything particularly interesting on it) and then he casually turned on his VPN to tunnel through the embassy firewall and log into Wikileaks.
It feels to me like certain high profile personalities in the media (like Assange, but certainly not limited to him) are all-too-often treated like they possess some sort of super-intelligence, and can do shockingly amazing things with computers. The reality is likely to be underwhelming most of the time, when you break down the colorful but vague terminology into layman's terms.
(Why does Slashdot always do that to the extended characterset?)
I do see your point â" but Iâ(TM)m a Mac user, so nope.
That article serves no purpose in this context, unless for some reason you're attempting to deflect from or minimize the detrimental impacts of Microsoft's poor decision making in this situation. Certainly you could be pedantic and argue that Microsoft isn't technically exhibiting insanity so much as they are exhibiting "perseveration" behaviors... but that distinction offers no particular benefit to the discussion, and only serves to confuse people.
Sometimes "cute sayings" are quite adequately descriptive enough to illustrate the point.
Microsoft has added various scripting languages to their Office products over the years... and each and every one has been abused by bad actors at some point, forcing Microsoft to cripple and/or remove the capability. What on earth could possibly make Microsoft think that adding JavaScript to Office documents will be any different? Particularly since it has already been abused in a myriad of ways within web browsers??
As the old saying goes, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results."
Thank you for looking up the patent. Based upon that priority date of 2012, and the incredible specificity of the patent, I tend to wonder if perhaps Nintendo could win this based upon prior art for the various sub-components, as I don't see how you can justify a patent which basically amounts to putting Widget A (which has prior art) alongside Widget B (which also has prior art). If the patent amounts solely to combining the two, than that's not much of an innovation; that's just an intuitively logical progression.
As an example, this is one of the toys from the 70s, which I remember playing with when I was a kid: Tandy home pong game. There's the connected controller "Widget" right there.
... The feature will be opt-in, and will not match users with people they're already friends with.
Is that so? Sounds to me like maybe someone neglected to do their homework.
Seems like the priorities are usually roughly as follows:
Though, as a developer myself, I kind'a feel like that last bullet is almost never completed... someone in the management team always wants us to change some more random crap, so we never really have enough time to make things look good, let alone consistent.
Sprint uses CDMA while T-Mobile uses GSM...
Except that basically everybody is in the middle of transitioning to some variation of LTE, so it'll all be the same in the end, anyway.
I've lost count... how many times has T-Mobile tried to merge with another carrier? And so far, hasn't each and every attempt been rebuffed by antitrust concerns?
Why are we hearing about this, yet again?
Doctors do use leeches still. Though they are bred and not collected. So leech collectors were replaced by leech breeders.
I think I now hate you, for making me look that up and learn about it. (Blech!)
Oh well... just add it to the list, I guess:
So, ummm... why is anybody upset about this, again?
Personally, I'm not overly impressed by the changes... but those changes aren't so horrible as to make me want to run away and hide in the old interface, either. In fact, the only difference which seems even remotely noteworthy to me, is that the entire interface appears to have become ever so slightly more sluggish -- but even that isn't horrific; it's just mildly annoying. The reality is, the new interface is going to be rolled out to all Gmail users eventually anyway, likely with little or no change from the current state... and ultimately, we'll all just get used to it. Eventually.
But honestly, this feels to me like nothing more than an exercise in change for it's own sake. Basically, they had one or two minor new features which they wanted to roll into the interface, but instead of just shoehorning them into the existing interface -- which almost certainly would have worked just fine -- they decided to use this as an excuse to throw a whole new coat of paint at a wall that really only had a few scratches that nobody even noticed anymore -- except of course for the guy who threw that original coat of paint on, eons ago. (Little known fact of life: That old adage about artists being their own worst critic can be equally applied to just about every skilled worker, anywhere.) And of course, everyone knows that any good interior designer never lets their client choose the same color scheme that they already had... the designer has to justify their sky-high invoice at the end of the day, after all! ("I've got it! Let's change everything from yellow to cyan! Trust me -- I promise it'll be fantastic!")
In addition, the developers who had spent countless hours implementing scads of features that are never used, have doubtless been pressuring those designers to help them justify their existence, as well. (All of us old-timers have seen the results of that quite a few times, in the form of the various feature reshuffles which have been thrust upon Microsoft Office users. "Hey -- what's this button? Is it a new feature?" "Huh? Oh... nah. I've used that feature a couple of times before. It's really not as useful as you might think, though...") The all-too-predictable results are, the new Gmail interface compresses and de-emphasizes features that most people use on a daily basis, expands (and surfaces) a few features that very few people care about or will ever use, alongside squeezing in those one or two actual new features... that last of which had in reality driven the entire venture in the first place.
To wit: much work was done, to accomplish little.
But I think it very plausible that the people working there don't have a goal of "dominate the market", but instead feel well-motivated/validated by being the org that keeps the other players honest.
It seems to me that there is a pretty big differences between keeping other players "honest" and suggesting to the government that other players will need to be broken up, in order to make them honest.
[You seem to be] ... Saying that they must remember being the top browser proves that they're resentful now and that said resentment drove the construction of their report. You have not evidenced that one bit. ...
I suppose I did not explicitly offer up certain details which support my point of view, because I felt they had already been voiced adequately enough in the original article and in the Shashdot summary. Don't you think that Mozilla is demonstrating a clear and unadulterated bias, specifically by advising the government to step in and rip to pieces those other mega-corporations with which Mozilla can no longer compete on equal footing? That type of advice, coupled with the fact that Mozilla used to behave in much the same manner themselves, is evidence enough in my opinion. Even if you disagree with my conclusions, you would have to acknowledge that their clear conflict of interest in the matter leaves a great deal of room to question their credibility. Mind you, I'm actually posting this from within Firefox, myself... but the very notion that their leadership is presently attempting to present themselves as an "unbiased and altruistic voice," and yet they are still offering up this rather extreme advice, shreds any remaining faith I might have once had in them. It's undeniable that we all have personal biases, and I firmly believe that anyone who tries to convince you that they hold to no biases at all is almost certainly trying to sell you a bill of goods.
In any case, it's probably moot; even if people in a position to take action actually wanted to follow Mozilla's proposed course, they probably wouldn't bother bringing it before the courts, because frankly there is even less chance of the US government actually breaking up any one of these companies today, than there was of them breaking up Microsoft back-in-the-day, even though that seemed about as close to a slam-dunk as any modern-day monopolistic practices court case could get... and I suppose we all know how that turned out.
Touché. Apologies, I was in a mood. Your humorous response is appreciated.
I entirely understand; we all have bad days, now and than. (Still don't want to copulate with you, though... I mean, we haven't even had drinks yet! Come to think of it, I suppose my wife might also take exception to the notion...)
There's a big difference between offering no evidence at all, and offering evidence which you deem to be inadequate, for some reason.
As for my theory as to the motivations: Did you read the linked article at all, or view any of the pages on the so-called "internet health report" website? I'll just point you to a single pertinent page on the site, wherein we find Mozilla themselves essentially putting forth the very argument that you just discounted: Google dominates browser market. On that page, the Mozilla writers comment on the potential impact which Chrome's dominance can have on the overall market. In particular:
... A lesser known effect of Google’s dominance is that the company has the power to define and implement features of how the Web works for everyone, no matter which browser they use – for instance, through the Web standards process. This is an unfortunate vector of competition, because Google can push for standards or formats that other browsers can’t or don’t want to deliver on. ...
If you know enough about the history of the internet, you might recognize that this statement very closely parallels the state of affairs, from back when Netscape was the dominant browser. For a decent period of time, all other browsers were desperately trying to play catch-up, while Netscape developers introduced new "standard features" one right after another. In some small ways, the impact of Netscape's former dominance (and by extension, those catch-up efforts) can still be felt even today; just take a quick look at the user agent for your browser.
So frankly, if you genuinely believe that the current regime over at the Mozilla Foundation has absolutely no memory at all of those "glory days," than I'd suggest that maybe you're discounting human nature a bit too much. We are all prone to reflect upon our past successes, now and than; that's just a given. It seems to me that one of the "measures of a man" could be found in how you deal with the passing of those successes: do you gripe about someone else who has managed to pick up the torch that you've now lost? Or do you celebrate their victory with them, and congratulate them for carrying the torch forward to the next landmark?
Clearly, in at least this instance, the folks at Mozilla are not doing the latter.
(Also, no... I have no desire to copulate with you. Have a nice day!)
Certainly there are other ways... but that doesn't necessarily make this way wrong. The "rules" of proper usage of punctuation and grammar are prone to change over the course of time, in any "living" language. To illustrate: were Shakespeare to pop his head through the veil and contemplate this (or really any) conversation, he would almost certainly be entirely unconvinced that anyone living today has even the vaguest notion of proper punctuation, grammar or spelling.
You say that I'm trolling, but you offer no argument at all to explain why. You know what it's called when you don't even bother to argue your point?
That's right... trolling.
The reversed order in this type of scenario is used to redirect the emphasis of the headline to the latter subject. That is to say, the structure of the title herein is directing the readers attention to the fact that the Mozilla Foundation is specifically the party which holds these views... rather than attempting to focus the readers attention on the views themselves. This type of literary tool can be useful when the author does not necessarily hold with the views and opinions expressed by the subject.
It really sounds to me like the few people still remaining at the Mozilla Foundation are expressing some passive aggressive bitterness, over their own loss of prominence in the market. Firefox (and even more-so, Netscape before it) was once a genuine player in the browser market, but now they've been relegated by most measurements to a weak second (or third) in the desktop market, and a veritable non-entity in the mobile market.
You had your heyday, Mozilla, but that's in the past and the digital world has changed in several strong leaps and bounds, since that time. Regardless of what you think the reasons were, there's not really much point in griping about the guys who now have what you lost... and no amount of finger pointing and gesticulating is going to change that.
I am shocked, shocked I say... that people didn't already know this.
No, seriously... why is this at all surprising to anyone?
You're describing an idyllic world, in which I would love to live and work. I've been around long enough, that experience tells me that I'm describing an all too common reality. Unfortunately.