Microsoft is like Christianity. It's been around for a long time - though there are older religions that are much more revered. It has its own quirks, its not without fallacies though the head proponents like to believe otherwise, and its almost a fashion for 'educated public' to poke holes into it and blame everything on it - although many of the very same people refuse to switch to a new religion when given the opportunity. In spite of its wide and well known drawbacks, it continues to be the most popular religion by far.
Above all, the most striking resemblance is that blind faith seems to be only thing that's holding it up.
here's the webcast of the session
the phone introduction starts at ~22.00 minutes into the video.
It's a complete touchscreen interface, fits into the palm nicely (looks smaller than iPhone?) and has an icon-driven GUI that looks suspiciously similar to the iPhone.
Current mini-Tablets, UMPCs, OQOs - any ultra-mobile (read small) PC solution for that matter, have an inherent disadvantage - they try to do too much in too little. miniaturization with full functionality is good but only up to a point - there comes a stage where the purpose of a device has to change, and then change the way people use it (and not necessarily the other way around always). We assume that a PC by it's very name defines the purpose of the device - that it has to store, process and communicate information. The OSs these days run high overheads and demand lot of hardware to support, which might be worthwhile if the system can be fully utilized - but when the goal is portability, the heavy framework becomes more of a burden than a feature. This is where a paradigm shift is needed - and it can be achieved, with the sweeping assumption that Internet is ubiquitous (an assumption that doesn't seem to be so wild these days).
A Mobile Internet Device would be a lean lightweight device that runs a small but not heavy-duty processor, and minimal hardware to support primary functions such as display, input, audio etc. It will not have an OS. Instead, what it will have is a Web Browser, and a basic BIOS type menu for system maintenance. The browser can be (preferably) written hardware specific, so it serves the dual purpose of a very basic OS as well as the browser itself. Of course the browser has to bem ore powerful than our regular ones with all appropriate plugins (Flash, JAVA, pdf etc) installed, but it still is no OS. It may look like this restricts the users to primarily browsing, but browsing is hardly passive these days - you can read, write, speak, draw, design - pretty much do any normal function with today's increasingly effective web apps. For instance - Google Docs & Spreadsheets replace MS/Open Office; there are similar web equivalents for other desktop functions and more are coming. In fact, there are webtops like Goowy and eyeOS which pretty much obviate the need of any local OS for common computing functions. No hard disk is needed because there is no large local storage - solid state memory will suffice. Onboard graphics card is enough, because all the display shows is Web content. The convergence of these hardware and software ideas lead to the perfect MID - not as small as a phone perhaps but small enough to be ultra-mobile, yet capable of replacing your regular desktop and serving as a PC solution for many ordinary users. The only (and reasonably significant) catch is that it needs a constant connection to the Internet to function.
Again, once the device starts to have extra applications other than the browser, it ceases to be a viable solution. The industry fears its product will fail if it doesn't provide the world to the customer, and the customer is often grabbing at more than what he/she will ever use. Only if we accept the design rule that this is this device's specific purpose, and we learn to use it that way (and there is no severe handicap in that for regular users who just like to browse or read mails or play a little solitare - all of which you can do online), will portable PCs really find a mass market.
From what I understand (read the invention background section in the patent) This is a patent about the implementation of a breakpoint handling mechanism, not the idea of using breakpoints to debug itself. specifically, conventional breakpoint sends a software interrupt that is either caught by (a) the debugger, pausing/halting program execution or (b) the OS, in case no debugger is present, resulting in a system hang or crash. Also the assembly halt code may vary for different processors.
The patented breakpoint function catches interrupts and handles them in a specific way, irrespective of whether a debugger is running or not, and also issues CPU-indepedent halt codes, marking an improvement over existing techniques.
Karma whoring, you say? I just have a fascination for patents.
It is so utterly weird that I was thinking of exactly the same thing this morning - of all things, free broadband access in India, although the wireless kind. Here's my take on it:
Internet is elementally another form of media, just like TV or radio or newspapers. In India, there are state sponsored TV and radio channels - have been around for much longer than cable TV arrived on the scene. In fact, government run TV (Doordarshan) and radio (Akashvani) in India were the primary information channels serving dual purposes of education and entertainment. They often featured very high quality productions that many people from older generations recall. The point is, these services were always free. You had the TV/radio signals floating about everywhere (save for some remote places) and all you had to do was stick an antenna out. no payment, no subscription - if you had the equipment, you could freely mooch off the airwaves. It was not restricted by class - the slums received the same signal as the bungalows. Nor was it only utilised by the higher class only - there were TVs/radios in slums as well, and the programs were enjoyed by literates and illiterates alike. TV/radio served a powerful way of connecting the humongous population together, to propagate common ideas and thoughts, and it was only logical that this be (a) provided by the government, and (b) provided for free so everyone can enjoy it. Democracy, of the people, by the people, for the people.
So why not Internet? after all, it is only another information channel, that happens to be quite popular nowadays. It naturally follows that if it is to be as far-reaching as its predecessors, in a country like India where the income spectrum is wide, a base (free) version should be available. The value-added services can continue to cater to the richer clientele, but the basic opportunity for lower-income groups to access the same information should not be denied.
Certainly there are (non-infrastructural) hurdles for deployment. Equipment (computers, routers etc) are not free but it was the same with TVs as well - still, people from a wide range of social levels have been able to procure the equipment, maybe not the best kind but still basic enough to provide them primary access. The bigger problem is literacy - Internet is predominantly an active media, unlike TV/radio which are more passive. In order to make any use of it, you need to know how. but here, the analogy of postal mail comes to our rescue - many illiterate people who are still unable to read/write make use of letters to communicate, with the help of an educated intermediary - the same model may work for Internet too. As a fringe benefit (but definitely no less important) this may actually help accelerate the literacy drive, apart from providing an easier and more effective way of education itself.
It appears that this is a proper decision for a country like India, which got it right on the two earlier forms of communication (in terms of primary provision).
Personally, I think it's a bit big That's it right there. For portable devices, size does matter. On a quick comparison from the archos and apple websites: Player - Weight - Size
Arch704 - 22oz - 7"x5"x0.8"
iPhone - 4.8oz - 4.5"x2.5"x0.5".
The primary drawback of archos players has always been size and weight - which also happens to be the primary requirement for these devices. if it does not satisfy this preliminary constraint, it does not matter what amazing features the archos provides.
what would be more interesting is that if artists now decide to switch sides and sign new contracts with EMI - more people would be ready to buy non-DRMed music so this would be a good way for the artists to reach more audience, besides gathering some good cred along the way for supporting non-DRM.
It would also make the other big music companies sit up and take notice, when they suddenly start losing their golden-egg laying geese.
what would be more interesting is that if artists now decide to switch sides and sign new contracts with EMI - more people would be ready to buy non-DRMed music so this would be a good way for the artists to reach more audience, besides gathering some good cred along the way for supporting non-DRM.
It would also make the other big music companies sit up and take notice, when they suddenly start losing their golden-egg laying geese.
you were so close. that is precisely the reason why the word/phrase 'web 2.0' is useful. the WWW as we know it today has come a long way from arbitrarily arranged blue underlined text on a white page to something equally simple yet more functional (not always but that is the idea). many improvements have made this possible - CSS based design, AJAX, RSS feeds - and it's not just technologies but also the type and function of websites that we have: blogs, wikis, social sites - in fact, the change in Web is in so many different ways that there is no one simple word to describe it all. Web 2.0 is (an arbitrary phrase, agreed) the most cohesive term (more so because of its repeated usage than actual semantics) that holds all these 'improvements' to the old web like glue and describes the current state of the WWW.
there is always a need for words that provide succinctness - that is one of the points of having a vocabulary. Web 2.0 is a buzzword, but it is also a buzzword that is useful to describe many things in a mere 6 characters. if you can come up with something that does that and sounds more meaningful too, put it up on wikipedia.
and what the hell is bullshit 'bingo' anyway? were you trying to say 'lingo' but just had too many B's in your bonnet?
Here are three more factors that are directly affecting Indian students:
If you are not an engineer or a doctor, then you are nobody. This is an outlook that is very prevalent among Indian parents - there are only two professional areas worth studying (although MBA has recently joined the two) for any indian student. All other fields (pure sciences, arts, humanities, commerce etc) are considered last resorts and muster very little respect. Graduates in such areas are not as esteemed or valued as their engineer friends, thus they receive less exposure and lesser opportunities.
Which college do you go to? the one on this end of the street or the one on the other end? as a result of this idolatry of disciplines, engineering colleges and medical schools are cropping up like mushrooms everywhere. starting an engineering college is a very easy and profitable business venture in India. This proliferation of institutions (with the wrong motives) thus leads to subpar standards of education - so even the engineers/doctors now are not trained properly in basic skills.
Universities are not for teaching communication skills. That's what society is for. if you cannot converse well with others, if you cannot carry yourself with confidence and in general cannot interact socially, then it's probably not the college's fault. it is up to the students to read non-curricular english books (which a college cannot, and shouldn't force), to form groups, try out new ideas and socialise more. Being anglicised, active and outgoing should not be considered a stigma anymore, and certainly should not be considered unpatriotic. The mindsets of students (and more importantly, of overbearing parents) should adapt to these new circumstances.
There are more things than thick-accented teachers and archaic teaching methods at fault here. In a developing country like India where opportunities and population continue to explode at a devilish pace, the competition will only grow fiercer and it takes more than passive complaining about teachers to succeed.
It could also be that the Indian Govt. is blocking sites in a clandestine fashion to prevent unduly publicising such inflammatory sites. FTFA, blocking a particular site will only make the webmasters move the site elsewhere, because there's no such thing as a 'ban' in the internet. now, if the indian govt. were to inform the public that they blocked www.badpropaganda.org, it will only make more people take notice of the site, google for it and read it wherever it is (certainly) moved to.
I do respect the counter-argument that questions the indian govt.'s peremptory authority to decide which site is bad propaganda and which isn't, but this is one of those problems for which there is no single solution that makes everyone happy - I'd rather not have the govt. advertise a hitherto unknown radical outfit and give it more audience than it can muster for itself. On the other side of the spectrum, if the site was really that popular, there would be enough hue-and-cry to drag the censorship out into the open for public discussion.
Re:Here's another problem with Gnome branding
on
GNOME 2.16 Released
·
· Score: 1
Thank God they aren't as krazy as KDE, prefixing everything with a K. imagine the names then -
This maybe purely hearsay but i've heard that some of the ppl being laid off were given an option of relocating to an offshore intel group (india/malaysia/israel) where the remuneration in US$ is much less - this way they get to keep the people in, and cut back on the budget as well. the wonders(curse?) of globalization!
hmm...so it looks like the Mac Pro still runs on ATI's cards, but Intel's processors...I wonder why Apple isn't moving to nvidia for its graphics cards, esply after AMD's purchase...also, no Crossfire option for the Mac Pro?
if the 'planemos' are not part of any stellar system, how are they visible in an optical telescope? they can't generate light of their own, they can only reflect...
The more popular Digg gets, the more idiots they collect.
hmm, Slashdot's been popular for a while. are you saying Slashdot is full of...?
The more popular any website gets, the more visitors (of any kind) they collect. popularity will drive as many idiots as actual,thinking readers. maintaining the quality of content is a different matter - if digg discussions continue to be as lame as they are now, then the contributions of thinking readers will dwindle. but that is also the simple beauty about digg - even if you do not want to contribute to the inane comments, your minimal contribution of a simple digg will still count.
i think of digg as a user-friendly news aggregator. i don't care what other people think about the news gathered, i am just there to browse and pick and choose the news that i like - and do my bit in improving the choice for others too.
A Cambridge student working on methods to extract oxygen and metals from lunar soil was recently awarded the first prize in a contest co-organized by the Heinlein trust and Russian aviation/education complex. Maybe his work (and/or derivatives) would have an impact on this promising moonbase?
FTA it looks like the actions and movements of the android have to be entirely controlled by humans using motion sensors. The android apparently is incapable of reading any kind of inputs (visual/aural) and processing and acting on them (the eyes/ears are for purely cosmetic reasons and nothing more, i believe). This is purely a controlled mechanical robot, not an intelligent auto-responsive robot - and though it's a neat proof of concept, I wonder what its real world applications could be?
Am I the only one who's getting tired of this trend of tagging on 2.0 to everything?
No. you are just one of the countless hordes of Slashdot readers who think everything coming with a 2.0 extension has to be stupid and bashing web 2.0 would make one look super cool. For God's sake, please at least check the actual merit of the product before bringing it down over a nomenclatural non-issue.
eh?! you are getting 1% (or half of it, subtracting expenses) because that is all your contribution to their revenue. you are not helping them make the rest of 99% so why should they pay you any cut of that?! The rest of the (10000-100)=9900 hits eefoof receives are from FUNNY.JPGs from other people and eefoof has to pay them 50% as well - so nett, eefoof pays 50% of their ad-revenue from your submission to you. it's a fair deal according to their arithmetic.
I honestly apologize to the hardworking devs at Flock for instigating such a nasty anti-Web 2.0 mudslinging in the name of your browser. I (erroneously) expected people to at least visit the site and see for themselves why this is an interesting app, instead of picking up on buzzwords. On hindsight, it was a pretty bad summary for a/. crowd - i should've stuck to saying how the Flock code was completely Open Source and totally developed with doses of caffeine and creativity.
Also, to clarify a couple of comments:
1. Yes, Flock is Firefox with some of the good plugins/extensions built-in - even some of the Flock team say it themselves. The reason why this is good (but maybe not necessarily better than Firefox) is that these extensions are much more tightly/cleanly integrated into the browser, and are already in there to start using.
2. Yes I believe it uses 32-bit Flash in a 32-bit browser, but it is a breeze to install/run Flock in a 64-bit env. And when you visit a flash site using Flock the first time, it will automatically download and install Flash for you - this is what I meant by pleasantly surprised. Last i checked it's quite a process to install 32-bit FF in a 64-bit env., and then to get Flash actually working in it.
I request readers to excuse my abuse of buzzwords and hype - but do check out Flock for what it's worth!
Google! Thou art the Champion of the Free! The Saviour of all that is Geek and Open! Deliver us from this Evil!!
So now that Google's lobbying for net neutrality has run down the gutter, maybe they would fall in step and actually turn it to their advantage - create their own netlanes but instead of charging tolls they will have billboards up everywhere and make ad-revenue by the click. given the exorbitant charges that the conglomerates will certainly charge, there may be quite a few thrifty bandwidth seekers who will gladly switch over to Googlanes. time to unpack all that dark fiber...
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is like Christianity. It's been around for a long time - though there are older religions that are much more revered. It has its own quirks, its not without fallacies though the head proponents like to believe otherwise, and its almost a fashion for 'educated public' to poke holes into it and blame everything on it - although many of the very same people refuse to switch to a new religion when given the opportunity. In spite of its wide and well known drawbacks, it continues to be the most popular religion by far.
Above all, the most striking resemblance is that blind faith seems to be only thing that's holding it up.
Enough with the trilogies already. why can't we have a single good movie and just let that be?
here's the webcast of the session the phone introduction starts at ~22.00 minutes into the video. It's a complete touchscreen interface, fits into the palm nicely (looks smaller than iPhone?) and has an icon-driven GUI that looks suspiciously similar to the iPhone.
Current mini-Tablets, UMPCs, OQOs - any ultra-mobile (read small) PC solution for that matter, have an inherent disadvantage - they try to do too much in too little. miniaturization with full functionality is good but only up to a point - there comes a stage where the purpose of a device has to change, and then change the way people use it (and not necessarily the other way around always). We assume that a PC by it's very name defines the purpose of the device - that it has to store, process and communicate information. The OSs these days run high overheads and demand lot of hardware to support, which might be worthwhile if the system can be fully utilized - but when the goal is portability, the heavy framework becomes more of a burden than a feature. This is where a paradigm shift is needed - and it can be achieved, with the sweeping assumption that Internet is ubiquitous (an assumption that doesn't seem to be so wild these days).
A Mobile Internet Device would be a lean lightweight device that runs a small but not heavy-duty processor, and minimal hardware to support primary functions such as display, input, audio etc. It will not have an OS. Instead, what it will have is a Web Browser , and a basic BIOS type menu for system maintenance. The browser can be (preferably) written hardware specific, so it serves the dual purpose of a very basic OS as well as the browser itself. Of course the browser has to bem ore powerful than our regular ones with all appropriate plugins (Flash, JAVA, pdf etc) installed, but it still is no OS. It may look like this restricts the users to primarily browsing, but browsing is hardly passive these days - you can read, write, speak, draw, design - pretty much do any normal function with today's increasingly effective web apps. For instance - Google Docs & Spreadsheets replace MS/Open Office; there are similar web equivalents for other desktop functions and more are coming. In fact, there are webtops like Goowy and eyeOS which pretty much obviate the need of any local OS for common computing functions. No hard disk is needed because there is no large local storage - solid state memory will suffice. Onboard graphics card is enough, because all the display shows is Web content. The convergence of these hardware and software ideas lead to the perfect MID - not as small as a phone perhaps but small enough to be ultra-mobile, yet capable of replacing your regular desktop and serving as a PC solution for many ordinary users. The only (and reasonably significant) catch is that it needs a constant connection to the Internet to function.
Again, once the device starts to have extra applications other than the browser, it ceases to be a viable solution. The industry fears its product will fail if it doesn't provide the world to the customer, and the customer is often grabbing at more than what he/she will ever use. Only if we accept the design rule that this is this device's specific purpose, and we learn to use it that way (and there is no severe handicap in that for regular users who just like to browse or read mails or play a little solitare - all of which you can do online), will portable PCs really find a mass market.
The patented breakpoint function catches interrupts and handles them in a specific way, irrespective of whether a debugger is running or not, and also issues CPU-indepedent halt codes, marking an improvement over existing techniques.
Karma whoring, you say? I just have a fascination for patents.It is so utterly weird that I was thinking of exactly the same thing this morning - of all things, free broadband access in India, although the wireless kind. Here's my take on it:
Internet is elementally another form of media, just like TV or radio or newspapers. In India, there are state sponsored TV and radio channels - have been around for much longer than cable TV arrived on the scene. In fact, government run TV (Doordarshan) and radio (Akashvani) in India were the primary information channels serving dual purposes of education and entertainment. They often featured very high quality productions that many people from older generations recall. The point is, these services were always free. You had the TV/radio signals floating about everywhere (save for some remote places) and all you had to do was stick an antenna out. no payment, no subscription - if you had the equipment, you could freely mooch off the airwaves. It was not restricted by class - the slums received the same signal as the bungalows. Nor was it only utilised by the higher class only - there were TVs/radios in slums as well, and the programs were enjoyed by literates and illiterates alike. TV/radio served a powerful way of connecting the humongous population together, to propagate common ideas and thoughts, and it was only logical that this be (a) provided by the government, and (b) provided for free so everyone can enjoy it. Democracy, of the people, by the people, for the people.
So why not Internet? after all, it is only another information channel, that happens to be quite popular nowadays. It naturally follows that if it is to be as far-reaching as its predecessors, in a country like India where the income spectrum is wide, a base (free) version should be available. The value-added services can continue to cater to the richer clientele, but the basic opportunity for lower-income groups to access the same information should not be denied.
Certainly there are (non-infrastructural) hurdles for deployment. Equipment (computers, routers etc) are not free but it was the same with TVs as well - still, people from a wide range of social levels have been able to procure the equipment, maybe not the best kind but still basic enough to provide them primary access. The bigger problem is literacy - Internet is predominantly an active media, unlike TV/radio which are more passive. In order to make any use of it, you need to know how. but here, the analogy of postal mail comes to our rescue - many illiterate people who are still unable to read/write make use of letters to communicate, with the help of an educated intermediary - the same model may work for Internet too. As a fringe benefit (but definitely no less important) this may actually help accelerate the literacy drive, apart from providing an easier and more effective way of education itself.
It appears that this is a proper decision for a country like India, which got it right on the two earlier forms of communication (in terms of primary provision).
Player - Weight - Size
Arch704 - 22oz - 7"x5"x0.8"
iPhone - 4.8oz - 4.5"x2.5"x0.5".
The primary drawback of archos players has always been size and weight - which also happens to be the primary requirement for these devices. if it does not satisfy this preliminary constraint, it does not matter what amazing features the archos provides.
It would also make the other big music companies sit up and take notice, when they suddenly start losing their golden-egg laying geese.
It would also make the other big music companies sit up and take notice, when they suddenly start losing their golden-egg laying geese.
there is always a need for words that provide succinctness - that is one of the points of having a vocabulary. Web 2.0 is a buzzword, but it is also a buzzword that is useful to describe many things in a mere 6 characters. if you can come up with something that does that and sounds more meaningful too, put it up on wikipedia.
and what the hell is bullshit 'bingo' anyway? were you trying to say 'lingo' but just had too many B's in your bonnet?
If you are not an engineer or a doctor, then you are nobody. This is an outlook that is very prevalent among Indian parents - there are only two professional areas worth studying (although MBA has recently joined the two) for any indian student. All other fields (pure sciences, arts, humanities, commerce etc) are considered last resorts and muster very little respect. Graduates in such areas are not as esteemed or valued as their engineer friends, thus they receive less exposure and lesser opportunities.
Which college do you go to? the one on this end of the street or the one on the other end? as a result of this idolatry of disciplines, engineering colleges and medical schools are cropping up like mushrooms everywhere. starting an engineering college is a very easy and profitable business venture in India. This proliferation of institutions (with the wrong motives) thus leads to subpar standards of education - so even the engineers/doctors now are not trained properly in basic skills.
Universities are not for teaching communication skills. That's what society is for. if you cannot converse well with others, if you cannot carry yourself with confidence and in general cannot interact socially, then it's probably not the college's fault. it is up to the students to read non-curricular english books (which a college cannot, and shouldn't force), to form groups, try out new ideas and socialise more. Being anglicised, active and outgoing should not be considered a stigma anymore, and certainly should not be considered unpatriotic. The mindsets of students (and more importantly, of overbearing parents) should adapt to these new circumstances.
There are more things than thick-accented teachers and archaic teaching methods at fault here. In a developing country like India where opportunities and population continue to explode at a devilish pace, the competition will only grow fiercer and it takes more than passive complaining about teachers to succeed.
I do respect the counter-argument that questions the indian govt.'s peremptory authority to decide which site is bad propaganda and which isn't, but this is one of those problems for which there is no single solution that makes everyone happy - I'd rather not have the govt. advertise a hitherto unknown radical outfit and give it more audience than it can muster for itself. On the other side of the spectrum, if the site was really that popular, there would be enough hue-and-cry to drag the censorship out into the open for public discussion.
Gnotes (notes)
Gnomenu (menu editor)
Gnomemory (disk usage analyzer)
Gnomedia (media player)
maybe it's just me, but i kind of like the short funky not-even-remotely-related-to-their-actual-applicat ion names.
This maybe purely hearsay but i've heard that some of the ppl being laid off were given an option of relocating to an offshore intel group (india/malaysia/israel) where the remuneration in US$ is much less - this way they get to keep the people in, and cut back on the budget as well. the wonders(curse?) of globalization!
hmm...so it looks like the Mac Pro still runs on ATI's cards, but Intel's processors...I wonder why Apple isn't moving to nvidia for its graphics cards, esply after AMD's purchase...also, no Crossfire option for the Mac Pro?
if the 'planemos' are not part of any stellar system, how are they visible in an optical telescope? they can't generate light of their own, they can only reflect...
The more popular any website gets, the more visitors (of any kind) they collect. popularity will drive as many idiots as actual,thinking readers. maintaining the quality of content is a different matter - if digg discussions continue to be as lame as they are now, then the contributions of thinking readers will dwindle. but that is also the simple beauty about digg - even if you do not want to contribute to the inane comments, your minimal contribution of a simple digg will still count.
i think of digg as a user-friendly news aggregator. i don't care what other people think about the news gathered, i am just there to browse and pick and choose the news that i like - and do my bit in improving the choice for others too.
A Cambridge student working on methods to extract oxygen and metals from lunar soil was recently awarded the first prize in a contest co-organized by the Heinlein trust and Russian aviation/education complex. Maybe his work (and/or derivatives) would have an impact on this promising moonbase?
FTA it looks like the actions and movements of the android have to be entirely controlled by humans using motion sensors. The android apparently is incapable of reading any kind of inputs (visual/aural) and processing and acting on them (the eyes/ears are for purely cosmetic reasons and nothing more, i believe). This is purely a controlled mechanical robot, not an intelligent auto-responsive robot - and though it's a neat proof of concept, I wonder what its real world applications could be?
so is there a chance that it will hit the moon?
eh?! you are getting 1% (or half of it, subtracting expenses) because that is all your contribution to their revenue. you are not helping them make the rest of 99% so why should they pay you any cut of that?! The rest of the (10000-100)=9900 hits eefoof receives are from FUNNY.JPGs from other people and eefoof has to pay them 50% as well - so nett, eefoof pays 50% of their ad-revenue from your submission to you. it's a fair deal according to their arithmetic.
shhh don't say that out loud...if everyone stops buying rev1 there would be no one to spot the defects that would be fixed in rev2 for us...
Also, to clarify a couple of comments:
1. Yes, Flock is Firefox with some of the good plugins/extensions built-in - even some of the Flock team say it themselves. The reason why this is good (but maybe not necessarily better than Firefox) is that these extensions are much more tightly/cleanly integrated into the browser, and are already in there to start using.
2. Yes I believe it uses 32-bit Flash in a 32-bit browser, but it is a breeze to install/run Flock in a 64-bit env. And when you visit a flash site using Flock the first time, it will automatically download and install Flash for you - this is what I meant by pleasantly surprised. Last i checked it's quite a process to install 32-bit FF in a 64-bit env., and then to get Flash actually working in it.
I request readers to excuse my abuse of buzzwords and hype - but do check out Flock for what it's worth!
Google! Thou art the Champion of the Free! The Saviour of all that is Geek and Open! Deliver us from this Evil!!
So now that Google's lobbying for net neutrality has run down the gutter, maybe they would fall in step and actually turn it to their advantage - create their own netlanes but instead of charging tolls they will have billboards up everywhere and make ad-revenue by the click. given the exorbitant charges that the conglomerates will certainly charge, there may be quite a few thrifty bandwidth seekers who will gladly switch over to Googlanes. time to unpack all that dark fiber...