It's not exactly snappy (a word processor with a splash screen?), nor particularly good looking.
No new office suite is about to overtake it, though, unless a big company throws a lot of resources into creating a free office suite. Openoffice (should I say Libreoffice yet?) has a great advantage in the amount of code already written: it's slow, but it beats everything (except perhaps MS Office) on features. Even IBM's "Lotus Symphony" is based on Openoffice code. Now if they could just make it rather faster...
I think Mozilla should stick to what it's good at. Firefox has not been 'outstripped in terms of features': nothing else has matched the power of its extensions system. It's been overtaken on speed and HTML5 support, but Firefox 4 will go a good way towards clawing that back.
There's no reason a native app should be any less capable of networking than a web app. Installation is trivial
If I want live collaboration on a spreadsheet, I've been able to do that for a few years with a web app (Google, Zoho). To the best of my knowledge, there's not yet a native app to do the same thing. Either it is easier to do with a web interface, or nobody's yet bothered to add the feature to a desktop app (where all the code for making spreadsheets is already written). As for installation: a) users are more likely to try something new if they don't have to download, install, remember to uninstall if they don't want it, and b) everyone who doesn't have admin rights (on a work computer, public computer, thin client...) often can't install anything.
There is no security benefit. The browser is not a sandbox. Putting all this capability into javascript increases the attack surface, and conditions people to just run whatever crap they find on the internet.
What? No. The browser heavily limits what javascript can do, except if it exploits an unpatched vulnerability. Javascript on a website cannot, for instance, access my file system, nor automatically launch a program when I start my computer. So long as people keep their browsers updated, running 'any random [javascript] crap they find' shouldn't cause problems (though it's not exactly advisable, because of possible zero-day exploits). What we want to condition people against is downloading and running random native crap from the internet, as that can do anything to their computer that the user themselves can do. Javascript engines might have holes, but the holes can be patched without breaking honest code. So, yes, there is absolutely a security benefit.
Which is kind of why I came to disagree. As Raenex has already said, the bad experiences you hear about tend to be the exception, not the rule.
Please, if you see obvious errors like the ones you described, have a shot at fixing them. Use a descriptive edit summary, like "correct spelling", or "fix link". Even the most protective of editors are unlikely to argue with such simple, obvious corrections, and even if they do, they'll just revert your edit. You won't get banned on that basis (despite what some people say, the rules are generally followed, and banning is taken fairly seriously). And even if you do somehow get banned, that's only a ban from editing: you'll still be able to read articles.
The sensible answer: Web apps have various advantages over native apps (and of course, various disadvantages). For example, easy collaboration, and no installation or upgrade procedure for the user. There's even a security benefit: if a user wants to play some silly game, it's much safer to run that in a browser than it is for them to download and install something potentially dodgy. Native apps aren't dead, but web apps have a place too, and there's enough reason to expand what they can do.
The other answer: The best technology doesn't always win. Even if web apps were an entirely bad idea (and I don't believe they are, see above), they're out there. If Mozilla said "Our JS is fast enough now, anything more should be a native app", it would be Firefox that died, not web apps.
Really, all this focus on faster Javascript puzzles me. JS, used correctly, should be a thin layer of glue,
That was the original idea of JS. It's already being used much more heavily in current web apps. But the main point of speeding it up isn't for today's websites, it's so that websites can do entirely new things without bringing the browser to a crawl. Think image processing, online mini-games, and no doubt hundreds of more imaginative uses.
it's gotten more words in it, but it's become no less fractious a society and no more accurate a source of information
Sounds like a description of/.;-). Seriously, though, Wikipedia's become a vastly more useful source of information over the past few years. Don't forget that many of those 'new words' are on topics that weren't in Wikipedia at all a few years back. And many more are linking out to sources. If you know how to use it (i.e. treat it as a starting point, not as hard fact), it's invaluable.
And while it's slow, it is getting more accurate, too. A year ago, it would tell you that unripe tomatoes were poisonous (citing an old book). Now it's got newer information (still with citations).
But for all that, I believe it's doing us a service by forcing us to have the arguments. We have to confront the views we don't like. Because there's only one 'current' version of any page, conflicting factions cannot produce their own versions* and simply ignore each other. And, most of the time, that results in some form of compromise. People aren't always nice to each other (although that's encouraged), but by and large, it works.
* Yes, I know, Conservapedia, Citizendium, and so on do have their own versions. But a) it's much easier to edit Wikipedia than it is to set up your own version, and b) almost nobody uses any of the alternatives.
Predictably enough,/. commenters line up to hate on Wikipedia. And yet, somehow, despite this apparent culture of obstructionism which will send it down the drain in short order, Wikipedia seems to still be going strong. Thinking back for a moment, I first heard of this free online encyclopaedia in around 2005. That's just five years ago, and Wikipedia is now the de facto starting point for finding information on almost anything. It's come a long way, and doesn't seem to be grinding to a halt any time soon.
Why do so many people here seem to have had bad experiences with Wikipedia? I've spent a fair bit of time editing articles, and even started a few, and while I sometimes disagree with people, almost everyone I've interacted with has been perfectly mature, and ready to reach an agreement. Obviously stories of frustration and anger get told more often, and read more (people are strange like that), but even accounting for that, it seems that a lot of/.ers run into problems with Wikipedia. Maybe 'geeky' topics (computers, sci-fi, trains, etc.) attract editors with less social skills, or who're more convinced they're right, so they block other editors' changes. Just a theory.
I also find signing comments with my real name helps. I hope it reminds other people that I'm a real person, but I know it makes me more civil to them ("Do I want a future employer to be able to find me calling him a *****?").
Oort cloud objects? The sunlight out there is going to be several orders of magnitude weaker than here. Even Mars is too cold to support life as we know it.
If you had sufficient nuclear fuel, you could produce heat, and enough light to grow crops. But it would require a massive amount of energy to support a small number of people in an enclosed, artificial environment. And if the redundant systems did fail, you'd be dead before anyone even heard your SOS.
So I don't think you'll exactly have societies setting up there. It could be a virtually unescapable prison colony, however.
Scenario 1a: Pennywise reader comes in, doesn't find any interesting books at 'loss-leader' prices because they've all been snaffled by PDA-wielding resellers. Loses interest, and doesn't bother coming back.
It's not just a question of money, though. It's about human benefit. The idea that you can look for a book for your own enjoyment, without having to compete with people looking to make a profit on it. Looking at it in a purely free-market sense ignores that.
Except that, for many people who actually want to read the books, the attraction of going to a library sale, or a second hand bookshop, is that they might find something fascinating and unexpected at a really good price. Last week, I found an amazing 1950s 'Wonders of Science' book (with some damage) for 20p, for instance.
The sellers have the right to target a local market, rather than just listing the books on the web (the global market). And I would argue that it's somewhat scumbaggish to undermine that choice by sucking out any books that are below the global market price for a quick profit.
Maybe I'm missing something. Why are you looking for reasons to sign up, when you clearly detest it so much? There are other products that already do what you want, and you agree that you don't need to be on Facebook. So why even bother asking?
In fact, if you did want to use it as an IM network, you could. It's not that complex to lock down all your privacy settings and turn off your wall, then just use Facebook chat (which apparently supports Jabber). But I don't think you want to, and I don't really blame you.
So, what, the internet should be denied to the masses to conform to the desires of a tiny techno-elite? That's stupid. The net is an incredibly powerful tool for everyone. Communication, information, entertainment. The anomaly isn't the mass participation, it was the brief interval you remember at the start of the internet. The 'eternal september' you so detest is the internet succeeding, like a revolution.
If you still want a geek community, there are plenty still there. You can block facebook entirely. Just don't claim that it's somehow polluting your internet simply by existing.
Personally, I like the popular internet. I can watch TV shows and movies on demand, with almost no wait. I can share 80 photos with a friend 100 miles away, and read her comments. I can find information on virtually any topic with just a few keystrokes. If it was just a hangout for a few geeks, nobody would have bothered to invest in that sort of services.
So you're using an IM network. Good for you. There are already plenty of them. Facebook doesn't need to be another one.
Many people like social networks. They like "wall-shit that people are going to write on". They want to share photos. They want to do status updates. Facebook has been very successful catering to that. It's not obliged to become an IM network just because you don't like social networks.
Why does/. hate social networks so much? Whenever there's a thread on FB or twitter, the responses are a predictable litany of "lol, idiot lusers" comments. No-one seems to see any purpose in them at all. The idea is simple enough: you have an idea, a picture, a silly video or whatever, that you'd like some of your friends to see. You don't know quite who'll be interested in it, so you post it publicly, and anyone who's not interested can just ignore it. It's like a blog and a blog aggregator, packaged up so that it appeals to non-geeks. Yes, there are some idiots on them, but plenty of people use them quite rationally.
You don't have to open the door, and the police often don't ask to come in or even knock before they smash their way in.
And this is where the analogy falls down. With a house, you gain nothing by forcing them to smash your door. There is no digital equivalent of smashing the door down. If you've used strong enough encryption, the only way to get past is to have the key. Once again, I don't have a problem with the law having the right (with a warrant or suchlike) to compel you to hand it over.
Of course it's possible that a password is innocently forgotten. It's possible that the accused just happened to be nearby when the murder happened. Neither are enough evidence to convict someone by themselves, but they may still be considered.
No. This is not an either or situation. The jury should consider the specific situation, how likely it is that the person forgot, what the other evidence suggests (and there must be some other evidence to trigger the search).
If a murder takes place, and I happen, entirely innocently, to be in the area at the time, that can still be used as evidence against me if I am a suspect. You don't just ignore evidence that might have an innocent explanation. You weigh it all together, and think about things like "reasonable doubt".
IANALNAA (I am neither a lawyer nor an American). I assume you're referring to the 'right to remain silent' part of the fifth, which is formally described as not "bearing witness against" yourself. So I would imagine that because the evidence in question (or lack of it) already exists, providing access to it does not count as bearing witness against yourself. To look at it another way, the encryption key itself is not incriminating evidence.
Intimidating letters, mostly. Lots of "cough up or we'll see you in court". If you say you don't have a TV, they say "alright, we'll send someone to check," but I don't know anyone who's been checked (nor what they do if you refuse them entry).
It's probably pretty easy to get away without paying, if you're that way inclined. I think most people with a TV pay up just because they don't want to be breaking the law. It helps that the BBC is pretty popular, and the license fee is less than a basic Sky subscription.
What interests me is whether it will change. I can legally get the last week of programs from their website for free (you have to pay to see it live). Which is quite good enough for me. I wonder if one day, anyone with an internet connection will have to pay. (To clarify, I wouldn't object to this)
Well, as confirmed by, ummm, me seeing it, the ballot did appear on existing installations of XP. And as confirmed by my sister asking me about it, it also covered existing installations of Vista. This is from automatic updates, not anything the user opted into.
There are some caveats: if someone was already using another browser, it doesn't seem that they got it. It also rolled out gradually, so not everyone got it at the same time. And I think OEMs may have been able to override it on new PCs. But it's definitely not true that it was only for Windows 7.
Your argument seems positively mild by internet forum standards. Just wrong (at the risk of raising the temperature;-) ).
But if you've encrypted the hard drive of your main computer, and you have to enter a password every time you start it... a jury isn't necessarily going to believe that you've suddenly conveniently 'forgotten it'.
I'm going to have to go against the prevailing view on/. on this one. Of course you have a right to encrypt your files so that people can't snoop through without your permission. But I don't think it's a problem that the state can, with good reason, compel you to decrypt it. If the police get a search warrant, that overrides your normal right to refuse them entry to your house. What's wrong with something similar for computers? Or is this just rabid, unthinking anti-establishmentism I smell?
In glorious soviet UK, we have four major TV channels (and minor channels, national and local radio stations) without commercials. This costs £145 per year ($230, or ~$20 per month). In fact, the radio channels and website can be used for free, you pay if you have a TV (although I wonder if this will change in the future).
Awareness of other browsers, particularly Firefox and Chrome, is certainly much better. It's no great surprise now to find non-geeks using them.
I'll have to take you up on the comment "IE still pre-installed on every single Windows computer", though. In the EU, while it may technically be pre-installed, users now have to specify which browser they want on first run (although I think OEMs can override that; I don't know how many do). It was even pushed out to existing systems, and people had to confirm that they wanted to stick with IE. I think it my sister tried Chrome.
Because the bandwidth is cheaper than the necessary storage?
The large university I went to used to run a web cache to do precisely what you suggest. By the time I got there, the cache had been disabled, although the proxy it used remained. It seems that there aren't enough people redownloading the same large files to make a cache useful. It did have mirrors of the repos for some popular Linux distros, if you bothered to set them up.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not exactly snappy (a word processor with a splash screen?), nor particularly good looking.
No new office suite is about to overtake it, though, unless a big company throws a lot of resources into creating a free office suite. Openoffice (should I say Libreoffice yet?) has a great advantage in the amount of code already written: it's slow, but it beats everything (except perhaps MS Office) on features. Even IBM's "Lotus Symphony" is based on Openoffice code. Now if they could just make it rather faster...
I think Mozilla should stick to what it's good at. Firefox has not been 'outstripped in terms of features': nothing else has matched the power of its extensions system. It's been overtaken on speed and HTML5 support, but Firefox 4 will go a good way towards clawing that back.
There's no reason a native app should be any less capable of networking than a web app. Installation is trivial
If I want live collaboration on a spreadsheet, I've been able to do that for a few years with a web app (Google, Zoho). To the best of my knowledge, there's not yet a native app to do the same thing. Either it is easier to do with a web interface, or nobody's yet bothered to add the feature to a desktop app (where all the code for making spreadsheets is already written). As for installation: a) users are more likely to try something new if they don't have to download, install, remember to uninstall if they don't want it, and b) everyone who doesn't have admin rights (on a work computer, public computer, thin client...) often can't install anything.
There is no security benefit. The browser is not a sandbox. Putting all this capability into javascript increases the attack surface, and conditions people to just run whatever crap they find on the internet.
What? No. The browser heavily limits what javascript can do, except if it exploits an unpatched vulnerability. Javascript on a website cannot, for instance, access my file system, nor automatically launch a program when I start my computer. So long as people keep their browsers updated, running 'any random [javascript] crap they find' shouldn't cause problems (though it's not exactly advisable, because of possible zero-day exploits). What we want to condition people against is downloading and running random native crap from the internet, as that can do anything to their computer that the user themselves can do. Javascript engines might have holes, but the holes can be patched without breaking honest code. So, yes, there is absolutely a security benefit.
Which is kind of why I came to disagree. As Raenex has already said, the bad experiences you hear about tend to be the exception, not the rule.
Please, if you see obvious errors like the ones you described, have a shot at fixing them. Use a descriptive edit summary, like "correct spelling", or "fix link". Even the most protective of editors are unlikely to argue with such simple, obvious corrections, and even if they do, they'll just revert your edit. You won't get banned on that basis (despite what some people say, the rules are generally followed, and banning is taken fairly seriously). And even if you do somehow get banned, that's only a ban from editing: you'll still be able to read articles.
The sensible answer: Web apps have various advantages over native apps (and of course, various disadvantages). For example, easy collaboration, and no installation or upgrade procedure for the user. There's even a security benefit: if a user wants to play some silly game, it's much safer to run that in a browser than it is for them to download and install something potentially dodgy. Native apps aren't dead, but web apps have a place too, and there's enough reason to expand what they can do.
The other answer: The best technology doesn't always win. Even if web apps were an entirely bad idea (and I don't believe they are, see above), they're out there. If Mozilla said "Our JS is fast enough now, anything more should be a native app", it would be Firefox that died, not web apps.
Really, all this focus on faster Javascript puzzles me. JS, used correctly, should be a thin layer of glue,
That was the original idea of JS. It's already being used much more heavily in current web apps. But the main point of speeding it up isn't for today's websites, it's so that websites can do entirely new things without bringing the browser to a crawl. Think image processing, online mini-games, and no doubt hundreds of more imaginative uses.
it's gotten more words in it, but it's become no less fractious a society and no more accurate a source of information
Sounds like a description of /. ;-). Seriously, though, Wikipedia's become a vastly more useful source of information over the past few years. Don't forget that many of those 'new words' are on topics that weren't in Wikipedia at all a few years back. And many more are linking out to sources. If you know how to use it (i.e. treat it as a starting point, not as hard fact), it's invaluable.
And while it's slow, it is getting more accurate, too. A year ago, it would tell you that unripe tomatoes were poisonous (citing an old book). Now it's got newer information (still with citations).
But for all that, I believe it's doing us a service by forcing us to have the arguments. We have to confront the views we don't like. Because there's only one 'current' version of any page, conflicting factions cannot produce their own versions* and simply ignore each other. And, most of the time, that results in some form of compromise. People aren't always nice to each other (although that's encouraged), but by and large, it works.
* Yes, I know, Conservapedia, Citizendium, and so on do have their own versions. But a) it's much easier to edit Wikipedia than it is to set up your own version, and b) almost nobody uses any of the alternatives.
Predictably enough, /. commenters line up to hate on Wikipedia. And yet, somehow, despite this apparent culture of obstructionism which will send it down the drain in short order, Wikipedia seems to still be going strong. Thinking back for a moment, I first heard of this free online encyclopaedia in around 2005. That's just five years ago, and Wikipedia is now the de facto starting point for finding information on almost anything. It's come a long way, and doesn't seem to be grinding to a halt any time soon.
Why do so many people here seem to have had bad experiences with Wikipedia? I've spent a fair bit of time editing articles, and even started a few, and while I sometimes disagree with people, almost everyone I've interacted with has been perfectly mature, and ready to reach an agreement. Obviously stories of frustration and anger get told more often, and read more (people are strange like that), but even accounting for that, it seems that a lot of /.ers run into problems with Wikipedia. Maybe 'geeky' topics (computers, sci-fi, trains, etc.) attract editors with less social skills, or who're more convinced they're right, so they block other editors' changes. Just a theory.
I also find signing comments with my real name helps. I hope it reminds other people that I'm a real person, but I know it makes me more civil to them ("Do I want a future employer to be able to find me calling him a *****?").
Oort cloud objects? The sunlight out there is going to be several orders of magnitude weaker than here. Even Mars is too cold to support life as we know it.
If you had sufficient nuclear fuel, you could produce heat, and enough light to grow crops. But it would require a massive amount of energy to support a small number of people in an enclosed, artificial environment. And if the redundant systems did fail, you'd be dead before anyone even heard your SOS.
So I don't think you'll exactly have societies setting up there. It could be a virtually unescapable prison colony, however.
Scenario 1a: Pennywise reader comes in, doesn't find any interesting books at 'loss-leader' prices because they've all been snaffled by PDA-wielding resellers. Loses interest, and doesn't bother coming back.
It's not just a question of money, though. It's about human benefit. The idea that you can look for a book for your own enjoyment, without having to compete with people looking to make a profit on it. Looking at it in a purely free-market sense ignores that.
Except that, for many people who actually want to read the books, the attraction of going to a library sale, or a second hand bookshop, is that they might find something fascinating and unexpected at a really good price. Last week, I found an amazing 1950s 'Wonders of Science' book (with some damage) for 20p, for instance.
The sellers have the right to target a local market, rather than just listing the books on the web (the global market). And I would argue that it's somewhat scumbaggish to undermine that choice by sucking out any books that are below the global market price for a quick profit.
Maybe I'm missing something. Why are you looking for reasons to sign up, when you clearly detest it so much? There are other products that already do what you want, and you agree that you don't need to be on Facebook. So why even bother asking?
In fact, if you did want to use it as an IM network, you could. It's not that complex to lock down all your privacy settings and turn off your wall, then just use Facebook chat (which apparently supports Jabber). But I don't think you want to, and I don't really blame you.
So, what, the internet should be denied to the masses to conform to the desires of a tiny techno-elite? That's stupid. The net is an incredibly powerful tool for everyone. Communication, information, entertainment. The anomaly isn't the mass participation, it was the brief interval you remember at the start of the internet. The 'eternal september' you so detest is the internet succeeding, like a revolution.
If you still want a geek community, there are plenty still there. You can block facebook entirely. Just don't claim that it's somehow polluting your internet simply by existing.
Personally, I like the popular internet. I can watch TV shows and movies on demand, with almost no wait. I can share 80 photos with a friend 100 miles away, and read her comments. I can find information on virtually any topic with just a few keystrokes. If it was just a hangout for a few geeks, nobody would have bothered to invest in that sort of services.
print u'\u002e\u0627\u06cc\u0631\u0627\u0646'
I just want to be able to send IM's.
So you're using an IM network. Good for you. There are already plenty of them. Facebook doesn't need to be another one.
Many people like social networks. They like "wall-shit that people are going to write on". They want to share photos. They want to do status updates. Facebook has been very successful catering to that. It's not obliged to become an IM network just because you don't like social networks.
Why does /. hate social networks so much? Whenever there's a thread on FB or twitter, the responses are a predictable litany of "lol, idiot lusers" comments. No-one seems to see any purpose in them at all. The idea is simple enough: you have an idea, a picture, a silly video or whatever, that you'd like some of your friends to see. You don't know quite who'll be interested in it, so you post it publicly, and anyone who's not interested can just ignore it. It's like a blog and a blog aggregator, packaged up so that it appeals to non-geeks. Yes, there are some idiots on them, but plenty of people use them quite rationally.
You don't have to open the door, and the police often don't ask to come in or even knock before they smash their way in.
And this is where the analogy falls down. With a house, you gain nothing by forcing them to smash your door. There is no digital equivalent of smashing the door down. If you've used strong enough encryption, the only way to get past is to have the key. Once again, I don't have a problem with the law having the right (with a warrant or suchlike) to compel you to hand it over.
Of course it's possible that a password is innocently forgotten. It's possible that the accused just happened to be nearby when the murder happened. Neither are enough evidence to convict someone by themselves, but they may still be considered.
No. This is not an either or situation. The jury should consider the specific situation, how likely it is that the person forgot, what the other evidence suggests (and there must be some other evidence to trigger the search).
If a murder takes place, and I happen, entirely innocently, to be in the area at the time, that can still be used as evidence against me if I am a suspect. You don't just ignore evidence that might have an innocent explanation. You weigh it all together, and think about things like "reasonable doubt".
IANALNAA (I am neither a lawyer nor an American). I assume you're referring to the 'right to remain silent' part of the fifth, which is formally described as not "bearing witness against" yourself. So I would imagine that because the evidence in question (or lack of it) already exists, providing access to it does not count as bearing witness against yourself. To look at it another way, the encryption key itself is not incriminating evidence.
IANAL, but aren't warrants issued by the courts? See also Search warrant and Probable cause. Presumably something similar applies here.
Intimidating letters, mostly. Lots of "cough up or we'll see you in court". If you say you don't have a TV, they say "alright, we'll send someone to check," but I don't know anyone who's been checked (nor what they do if you refuse them entry).
It's probably pretty easy to get away without paying, if you're that way inclined. I think most people with a TV pay up just because they don't want to be breaking the law. It helps that the BBC is pretty popular, and the license fee is less than a basic Sky subscription.
What interests me is whether it will change. I can legally get the last week of programs from their website for free (you have to pay to see it live). Which is quite good enough for me. I wonder if one day, anyone with an internet connection will have to pay. (To clarify, I wouldn't object to this)
Well, as confirmed by, ummm, me seeing it, the ballot did appear on existing installations of XP. And as confirmed by my sister asking me about it, it also covered existing installations of Vista. This is from automatic updates, not anything the user opted into.
There are some caveats: if someone was already using another browser, it doesn't seem that they got it. It also rolled out gradually, so not everyone got it at the same time. And I think OEMs may have been able to override it on new PCs. But it's definitely not true that it was only for Windows 7.
Your argument seems positively mild by internet forum standards. Just wrong (at the risk of raising the temperature ;-) ).
But if you've encrypted the hard drive of your main computer, and you have to enter a password every time you start it... a jury isn't necessarily going to believe that you've suddenly conveniently 'forgotten it'.
I'm going to have to go against the prevailing view on /. on this one. Of course you have a right to encrypt your files so that people can't snoop through without your permission. But I don't think it's a problem that the state can, with good reason, compel you to decrypt it. If the police get a search warrant, that overrides your normal right to refuse them entry to your house. What's wrong with something similar for computers? Or is this just rabid, unthinking anti-establishmentism I smell?
I hope in time commercial-less media is the norm.
In glorious soviet UK, we have four major TV channels (and minor channels, national and local radio stations) without commercials. This costs £145 per year ($230, or ~$20 per month). In fact, the radio channels and website can be used for free, you pay if you have a TV (although I wonder if this will change in the future).
Awareness of other browsers, particularly Firefox and Chrome, is certainly much better. It's no great surprise now to find non-geeks using them.
I'll have to take you up on the comment "IE still pre-installed on every single Windows computer", though. In the EU, while it may technically be pre-installed, users now have to specify which browser they want on first run (although I think OEMs can override that; I don't know how many do). It was even pushed out to existing systems, and people had to confirm that they wanted to stick with IE. I think it my sister tried Chrome.
Because the bandwidth is cheaper than the necessary storage?
The large university I went to used to run a web cache to do precisely what you suggest. By the time I got there, the cache had been disabled, although the proxy it used remained. It seems that there aren't enough people redownloading the same large files to make a cache useful. It did have mirrors of the repos for some popular Linux distros, if you bothered to set them up.