The documentation is not misleading at all. Maybe if you only read one single paragraph and ignore the rest you will get the wrong idea, but the fact is that most people seem to get it.
And you are saying that TFA is like comparing Access to Oracle, but why are you assuming that everyone knows everything you do about this? A comparison like this between Access and Oracle would not imply that they are equal at all. In fact, the test results speak for themselves.
I'm sure you would like to go on and on about this, but you didn't actually address my comment. Did you understand what I wrote about Chris Messina's misguided blog post?
FWIW I completely agree that Unite and servers like Apache are completely different beasts. But that doesn't mean that it isn't interesting to see comparisons and benchmarks. And nothing beats Unite's ease of use for most people. You won't be hosting the next Facebook, but you will have control over your own data. Several people I know have converted to Opera already based on this first preview of Unite. They love it. It's more to do with the ease of use than that they don't want other people to host their files for the most part, though.
I'm surprised to see that people are still linking to this. It's basically full of errors, and was written in rage over all the hype Unite was getting. He was angry about how people just repeated Opera's claims blindly. Kind of like you are blindly referring to his blog post even though it turns out that the post is too inaccurate to really be used for anything.
You really should read some of the comments on the page you are linking to, in order to see people correcting all the misconceptions. For example the misconception that everything goes through a proxy, as you claim it does. Furthermore Chris's comments where fun until Haavard took him down a notch on his own blog, resulting in Chris himself posting on Haavard's blog with a massively different tone.
A more thoughtful take on the subject can be found here:
I'm surprised to see that people are still linking to this. It's basically full of errors, and was written in rage over all the hype Unite was getting. He was angry about how people just repeated Opera's claims blindly. Kind of like you are blindly referring to his blog post even though it turns out that the post is too inaccurate to really be used for anything.
You really should read some of the comments on the page you are linking to, in order to see people correcting all the misconceptions. For example the misconception that everything goes through a proxy, as you claim it does.
Furthermore Chris's comments where fun until Haavard took him down a notch on his own blog, resulting in Chris himself posting on Haavard's blog with a massively different tone.
You are comparing apples and oranges. The 10 MB version of Opera has 30 languages included. Compare the basic English version, and the story is quite different.
I don't know about memory usage. In my experience, Opera does better than any other browser there.
What is "just a web server"? He tests both dynamic and static data. PHP and MySQL was just for comparison purposes, to see how the Unite server compares to other web servers.
If I am not mistaken the OLPC project had to double the amount of RAM to get Firefox to run properly on the system. It looks like Firefox could indeed benefit from losing a bit of excess fat.
As for this story, I doubt that bookmarks, history and those kinds of features are the ones making Firefox run slow. It probably has more to do with the architecture itself.
I'm not sure if poor people filling in CAPTCHAs should be our biggest concern, when people are in fact dying all over the world from war, starvation, and so on (yes, I know that it's possible to focus on several problems at once). However, the problem with CAPTCHAs being worked around by real people (either by hiring people to do it or by luring porn surfers to fill it in for them) has been there for ages.
If I am not mistaken, there have been several stories on this kind of thing on Slashdot...
Ayway, the bottom line is that spammers have been doing this for a long time, and I'm not sure if the $100 laptops will make a difference either way. Will these $100 laptops all have internet access?
Opera has lots of features in a small (and fast) package. By default, Opera looks any plain browser, but if you feel like it, you can dive below the surface and discover a lot of features that speed up browsing, such as mouse gestures and extensive keyboard support (both shortcuts and spatial navigation for using the keyboard to navigate pages).
The best thing you can do is to simply download it and give it a fair go. If you surf around and read about Opera you'll discover lots of nice little touches that make browsing more convenient. Maybe you'll find that you love Opera. Maybe you won't. It's a slightly different approach than what Firefox is doing, but at least you won't have to rely on extensions for functionality. That can be both good and bad, I guess. (Opera seems to be a bit more efficient on the memory usage than Firefox, mind you.)
But Opera is actually also extensible in various ways, such as User JavaScript ("Greasemonkey"), and similar. There are lots of nifty things to discover, such as custom made toolbars.
Razorback2 never gave anyone anything. It was simply a server which passed on information others sent to each other. From the press release:
"The operators of this eDonkey site chose not to exercise control over files being traded by users which including those containing child pornography, bomb-making instructions and terrorist training videos."
They chose not to exercise control just like common carriers choose not to exercise control. Would we punish phone companies for not screening all calls for terrorist threats? Of course not. They have no control over what kind of calls people make, just like Razorback2 has no control over what kind of content passes through the server. Well actually, the "content" is more like links to content...
If you were to be used in an equivalent example, you would be a phone company which chose to let others freely place calls on their phone network.
Opera announced an agreement with BitTorrent the other day. Opera first included BitTorrent in 8.02 and then 8.10 (which was never officially released), but then went quiet about it. Now BitTorrent showed up again in Opera 9.0 Preview 2. Was this because BitTorrent approached Opera and wanted them to pay up? Is Opera the first to pay BitTorrent Inc. for the "privilege" of using the trademark?
Well there you go then. Opera has always had to do everything on its own. No donations. No huge corporations to pay for everything. As I said, it has been both a blessing and a curse. Obviously, a tiny company which has to pay its own bills is going to have problems doing "everything" at the same time.
Re:Opera did heavily influence Firefox.
on
A History of Firefox
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· Score: 4, Interesting
It would be really nice to see Opera and OmniWeb (in particular) receive more credit. I think they deserve a lot more attention than they have now.
Firefox broke into the mainstream, but the only innovation is the extensions system. Opera and OmniWeb have tons of innovative features, but most people never get to know about it.
And some of these features are actually possible to do as Firefox extensions.
It's almost as if there's no point in any other browser:) You can use Firefox, and if you need more features, you can just install extensions.
But I actually find extensions to often be very bad substitutes for properly integrated features. Not everyone wants to deal with extensions.
Opera - kind of a sad story in a way?
on
A History of Firefox
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· Score: 5, Informative
Opera had always been the "good guys" before Firefox came around and stole the limelight. The company has been run by the same people for ten and a half years by now - the founders - and they've had a clear vision. They wanted to bring the web to everyone, to give them choice.
Unlike Mozilla, Opera has always had make money, and that in a situation where they've had less than one per cent of the market. So Opera hasn't been able to take "shortcuts" and rely on donations until it turned out that searches could actually pay for development, alongside other deals of course.
That hurt Opera a bit, I think. You have to pay for Opera while the others were free. Then you could choose ads instead, but most people don't like those. So Opera never got a huge following.
Opera was also a power user program for many years. It is not until recently that Opera has cleaned up the default user interface to make it easy for newbies to start using it as well.
While the payware, the ads, and so on were necessary to keep the company afloat, it has also hurt Opera. Firefox could come around to steal the thunder at exactly the right time, and backed by a massive marketing campaign. Firefox's timing was incredible. They released 1.0 when everyone was talking about how dangerous it was to use Internet Explorer.
While Firefox was free as in beer, easy to use, and ready for the masses (more or less), Opera still had to rely on ads, and had to charge for the browser. But they cleaned up the UI, and last year Opera was released for free-as-in-beer.
Some may say "too little too late", but Opera has never been huge. There isn't much of a market share to lose! Opera has a small but loyal following, and it's still smaller, faster, and it has more functionality out of the box than Firefox.
Now that Opera has simplified the UI and removed the ads, it can only grow. It will need proper marketing, though, and it will need to differentiate itself from Firefox and establish an identity which gives people a clear vision of what Opera is about, and why they should use it instead of something else.
Opera has always been the "browser innovator". Most features in Firefox were available in Opera ages before Firefox did it, and some were even invented by Opera. But these days Firefox takes all the credit, and that's partly because it can rely on others who have done everything, so it can simply pick and choose from other browsers' innovations. And it can avoid the pitfalls too, because Firefox already made those mistakes back when it was "Netscape". Firefox obviously benefits from being Netscape's "successor". All web designers know about Netscape, after all. So they can't ignore it when designing pages.
Opera has done a lot, but one wouldn't think so just by looking at its market share. It's a pity, really. Opera was the only independent browser, and they put real money into open standards. IE was Microsoft and Mozilla/Firefox was AOL/Sun/Nokia/IBM/etc. Everyone else was in some major corporation's pockets, but not Opera.
Now Firefox has stolen the thunder, partly deserved, partly undeserved. But I think Opera can make it too. They just need to get the marketing right.
You can have a look at how some of them were revealed in the talk page for rep. Marty Meehan (D). There's even a big list of entries edited by a specific IP address, with the comment:
"These edits range from benificial and informative to libelous and childish."
I'm hesitant to reply to this troll and give it more exposure than it needs, but on the other hand, a few corrections/different points of view probably won't hurt...
"the big banner should just say, "we used to cost money, but now we're free even though many web sites don't display properly,"
That is true for all non-IE browsers. Until v1.5 Firefox couldn't even display the old Slashdot correctly, but you often had to refresh to make it work properly.
"but do note that we invented lots of cool ideas that were adopted by all of our competitors and most people don't know this but most of our core marketing team is in the southern USA area"
Opera Software is based on Norway (Northern Europe).
"and also we have this mobile browser accelerator that nobody even really uses much because it only works on like ten phones"..."
Not sure what this is all about, but Opera Mini works on most phones available today.
"and the winner of this contest will be: ideally thin, caucasian and with a hip "opera user look" that the company can deploy in a larger integrated campaign. mark my words: no fat people, burn victims or others in that category of "couldn't work for abercrombie" will win..."
Let's see what happens. Opera isn't exactly known to do it the traditional way. Heck, the CEO doesn't even allow himself a big fat pay check even though he certainly deserves it. He could have been a millionaire, but drives around in a rusty old car.
"in fact, my guess is that the winner will be employed by either starbucks or abercrombie, age 22-26, female (tech influencers right now), shoulder length hair that's dark, thin and with a natural look light on cosmetics and wearing only solid colors on the billboard because it will create better contrast with the opera logo..."
Actually, the person will be chosen based on submissions posted on the my.opera.com community site. They will not choose a professional model, since this isn't Opera's style. See above about how even the CEO is really down to earth.
They don't like to brag, so this marketing campaign is really unlike Opera to begin with, so my guess is that they'll choose someone who looks decent enough, but probably not someone who could have been a model anyway. Just an average person who doesn't make Opera look really bad.
Basically, this is meant as a "thanks" to the community that's been supporting Opera through all these years. Opera just turned 10, remember.
Oh well, this probably won't get through since bashing Opera seems to be the popular thing to do these days...
If it can be verified that this is indeed a valid bug in Firefox 1.5, then I would consider it a security issue.
Now, I definitely agree that normal crash bugs are NOT security issues, but in this case the browser won't start properly unless you erase the history, and all those novice Firefox switchers won't know that this workaround exists. As such, this bug, if it is actually there, will cripple Firefox for a large number of users.
You have gotten some responses already, but I would just like to point out that I don't think "normal" crash bugs are security issues. Normal crash bugs will cause the browser to shut down, and that's it.
However, it does become a security issue if the crash leads to the possibility to execute code on the local system, or if it permanently cripples the browser, as it does in this case.
I've seen a few "normal" crash bug reported as security issues, and I think that's rather silly and might end up mudding the waters, so to speak. If people cry wolf too many times, and it turns out that it's just a crash, which we all know happen, and they can't be exploited, then people will go "oh, it's just another crash" when a real issue is revealed. Such as this one.
My first reaction when I heard about this was "what? Another crasher reported as a security flaw? When will it all end?!" But then I read more to see if I was missing something, and it turned out to be a real issue.
It might not be a big deal to those of us who know how to work around it, but imagine one of the many novice users out there being caught by this flaw. They may dump Firefox and never look back.
If this is the same law proposal that specifically targeted video games but ignored things like movies, then the law isn't that sane after all. This was one of the big problems pointed out by the industry and its defenders - that the law was singling out video games and ignoring other forms of entertainment.
The way this law looks now it's more of a patchwork, and a kind of "let's do something so it looks like we care and are actually giving value back to the tax payers" law which should be shot down and replaced with something better. Or ignored.
Slashdot Mirror
The documentation is not misleading at all. Maybe if you only read one single paragraph and ignore the rest you will get the wrong idea, but the fact is that most people seem to get it.
And you are saying that TFA is like comparing Access to Oracle, but why are you assuming that everyone knows everything you do about this? A comparison like this between Access and Oracle would not imply that they are equal at all. In fact, the test results speak for themselves.
FWIW I completely agree that Unite and servers like Apache are completely different beasts. But that doesn't mean that it isn't interesting to see comparisons and benchmarks. And nothing beats Unite's ease of use for most people. You won't be hosting the next Facebook, but you will have control over your own data. Several people I know have converted to Opera already based on this first preview of Unite. They love it. It's more to do with the ease of use than that they don't want other people to host their files for the most part, though.
I'm surprised to see that people are still linking to this. It's basically full of errors, and was written in rage over all the hype Unite was getting. He was angry about how people just repeated Opera's claims blindly. Kind of like you are blindly referring to his blog post even though it turns out that the post is too inaccurate to really be used for anything.
You really should read some of the comments on the page you are linking to, in order to see people correcting all the misconceptions. For example the misconception that everything goes through a proxy, as you claim it does. Furthermore Chris's comments where fun until Haavard took him down a notch on his own blog, resulting in Chris himself posting on Haavard's blog with a massively different tone.
I'm surprised to see that people are still linking to this. It's basically full of errors, and was written in rage over all the hype Unite was getting. He was angry about how people just repeated Opera's claims blindly. Kind of like you are blindly referring to his blog post even though it turns out that the post is too inaccurate to really be used for anything.
You really should read some of the comments on the page you are linking to, in order to see people correcting all the misconceptions. For example the misconception that everything goes through a proxy, as you claim it does. Furthermore Chris's comments where fun until Haavard took him down a notch on his own blog, resulting in Chris himself posting on Haavard's blog with a massively different tone.
I don't know about memory usage. In my experience, Opera does better than any other browser there.
What is "just a web server"? He tests both dynamic and static data. PHP and MySQL was just for comparison purposes, to see how the Unite server compares to other web servers.
And yet it's still smaller than the so-called "pure browsers" ;)
As for this story, I doubt that bookmarks, history and those kinds of features are the ones making Firefox run slow. It probably has more to do with the architecture itself.
If I am not mistaken, there have been several stories on this kind of thing on Slashdot...
Ayway, the bottom line is that spammers have been doing this for a long time, and I'm not sure if the $100 laptops will make a difference either way. Will these $100 laptops all have internet access?
If you search Google for "why Opera" you'll find pages like this one, with a nice list of reasons for why you should consider Opera.
The best thing you can do is to simply download it and give it a fair go. If you surf around and read about Opera you'll discover lots of nice little touches that make browsing more convenient. Maybe you'll find that you love Opera. Maybe you won't. It's a slightly different approach than what Firefox is doing, but at least you won't have to rely on extensions for functionality. That can be both good and bad, I guess. (Opera seems to be a bit more efficient on the memory usage than Firefox, mind you.)
But Opera is actually also extensible in various ways, such as User JavaScript ("Greasemonkey"), and similar. There are lots of nifty things to discover, such as custom made toolbars.
Anyway, the Search Engine Journal editor asked Opera users to convince him to use Opera. He got quite a few useful replies. Maybe they will be of interest to you, too...
If you were to be used in an equivalent example, you would be a phone company which chose to let others freely place calls on their phone network.
Opera announced an agreement with BitTorrent the other day. Opera first included BitTorrent in 8.02 and then 8.10 (which was never officially released), but then went quiet about it. Now BitTorrent showed up again in Opera 9.0 Preview 2. Was this because BitTorrent approached Opera and wanted them to pay up? Is Opera the first to pay BitTorrent Inc. for the "privilege" of using the trademark?
Well there you go then. Opera has always had to do everything on its own. No donations. No huge corporations to pay for everything. As I said, it has been both a blessing and a curse. Obviously, a tiny company which has to pay its own bills is going to have problems doing "everything" at the same time.
Firefox broke into the mainstream, but the only innovation is the extensions system. Opera and OmniWeb have tons of innovative features, but most people never get to know about it.
And some of these features are actually possible to do as Firefox extensions.
It's almost as if there's no point in any other browser :) You can use Firefox, and if you need more features, you can just install extensions.
But I actually find extensions to often be very bad substitutes for properly integrated features. Not everyone wants to deal with extensions.
Unlike Mozilla, Opera has always had make money, and that in a situation where they've had less than one per cent of the market. So Opera hasn't been able to take "shortcuts" and rely on donations until it turned out that searches could actually pay for development, alongside other deals of course.
That hurt Opera a bit, I think. You have to pay for Opera while the others were free. Then you could choose ads instead, but most people don't like those. So Opera never got a huge following.
Opera was also a power user program for many years. It is not until recently that Opera has cleaned up the default user interface to make it easy for newbies to start using it as well.
While the payware, the ads, and so on were necessary to keep the company afloat, it has also hurt Opera. Firefox could come around to steal the thunder at exactly the right time, and backed by a massive marketing campaign. Firefox's timing was incredible. They released 1.0 when everyone was talking about how dangerous it was to use Internet Explorer.
While Firefox was free as in beer, easy to use, and ready for the masses (more or less), Opera still had to rely on ads, and had to charge for the browser. But they cleaned up the UI, and last year Opera was released for free-as-in-beer.
Some may say "too little too late", but Opera has never been huge. There isn't much of a market share to lose! Opera has a small but loyal following, and it's still smaller, faster, and it has more functionality out of the box than Firefox.
Now that Opera has simplified the UI and removed the ads, it can only grow. It will need proper marketing, though, and it will need to differentiate itself from Firefox and establish an identity which gives people a clear vision of what Opera is about, and why they should use it instead of something else.
Opera has always been the "browser innovator". Most features in Firefox were available in Opera ages before Firefox did it, and some were even invented by Opera. But these days Firefox takes all the credit, and that's partly because it can rely on others who have done everything, so it can simply pick and choose from other browsers' innovations. And it can avoid the pitfalls too, because Firefox already made those mistakes back when it was "Netscape". Firefox obviously benefits from being Netscape's "successor". All web designers know about Netscape, after all. So they can't ignore it when designing pages.
Opera has done a lot, but one wouldn't think so just by looking at its market share. It's a pity, really. Opera was the only independent browser, and they put real money into open standards. IE was Microsoft and Mozilla/Firefox was AOL/Sun/Nokia/IBM/etc. Everyone else was in some major corporation's pockets, but not Opera.
Now Firefox has stolen the thunder, partly deserved, partly undeserved. But I think Opera can make it too. They just need to get the marketing right.
Oh, and here's Meehan's page on house.gov.
"These edits range from benificial and informative to libelous and childish."
They don't like to brag, so this marketing campaign is really unlike Opera to begin with, so my guess is that they'll choose someone who looks decent enough, but probably not someone who could have been a model anyway. Just an average person who doesn't make Opera look really bad.
Basically, this is meant as a "thanks" to the community that's been supporting Opera through all these years. Opera just turned 10, remember.
Oh well, this probably won't get through since bashing Opera seems to be the popular thing to do these days...
Now, I definitely agree that normal crash bugs are NOT security issues, but in this case the browser won't start properly unless you erase the history, and all those novice Firefox switchers won't know that this workaround exists. As such, this bug, if it is actually there, will cripple Firefox for a large number of users.
However, it does become a security issue if the crash leads to the possibility to execute code on the local system, or if it permanently cripples the browser, as it does in this case.
I've seen a few "normal" crash bug reported as security issues, and I think that's rather silly and might end up mudding the waters, so to speak. If people cry wolf too many times, and it turns out that it's just a crash, which we all know happen, and they can't be exploited, then people will go "oh, it's just another crash" when a real issue is revealed. Such as this one.
My first reaction when I heard about this was "what? Another crasher reported as a security flaw? When will it all end?!" But then I read more to see if I was missing something, and it turned out to be a real issue.
It might not be a big deal to those of us who know how to work around it, but imagine one of the many novice users out there being caught by this flaw. They may dump Firefox and never look back.
The way this law looks now it's more of a patchwork, and a kind of "let's do something so it looks like we care and are actually giving value back to the tax payers" law which should be shot down and replaced with something better. Or ignored.