Jack Valenti Quote: "I don't think there's really a single actor or director in the world who does not believe that if you don't combat piracy, it will devour you in the future."
I'm gonna take a stab at this one. Hmmm, let me think. Michael Moore maybe???? Hmmm.... Quentin Tarentino?
I sure hope they didn't quote him saying this after telling him Moore and Tarentino's positions.
but, wasn't decss possible only because one software player left its key out in the open? Seems to me you'd need to get hold of one of those special players if you were going to crack their partner discs.
That was how decss was cracked, but it wasn't possible only because of that. There are other methods. This was simply a very convenient one to take. It would have been cracked eventually anyway.
Seems if they're going to get pounded, then maybe they ought to do this in groups. Since the whole thing appears to be done via a table lookup, wouldn't it make sense to wait until you have, say 10 that are nearby in the table and then do all 10 at once instead of restarting the search for each one. I would imagine their throughput could go upsignificantly if they did this.
Of course, I don't know enough about how the whole thing works. Maybe I'm completely off base. I'm sure they weren't counting on getting slashdotted either.
They had to go and make the platters round. Didn't they know Seagate had a patent on round flat things with a hole in the center? Man, if it wasn't for Dunkin Donuts, they would have gotten that patent on ring-torus shaped things as well. And what would the police have to do if that had happened?
Re:It's entirely possible to change without drugs
on
Lysergically Yours
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You just "get high on life." I overcame my shyness problem with a similar sort of one-time experience, but it had nothing to do with drugs, but rather a group of friends who were all "tripping" on the same wavelength in an evening.
Drugs have nothing to do with it. They're just crutches for people who don't have powerful enough imaginations.
Since you posted as an AC, I probably shouldn't even respond, but others may feel the same, so maybe it deserves a response.
I agree a drug for the purpose of overcoming shyness is certainly a crutch. That doesn't invalidate it. Taking Paxil to treat anxiety disorder is a crutch as well, but doctors prescribe it every day for precisely that purpose. In fact, taking almost any sort of drug for almost any sort of condition, is a crutch. Taking an aspirin for a headache is a crutch. Taking a multivitamin instead of eating a balanced diet with all the nutrients you need, is a crutch. So what?
But let's get away from the analogy and go right to the source. People with broken legs use crutches. They don't have to. They could walk on their broken legs, endure the pain and live with the consequence which might be lifelong problems with their legs. Or they could stay laid up in bed until the leg heals.
The point is, a crutch serves the primary purpose of expediting recovery/cure. So your point that it is a crutch is kind of meaningless.
You had your particular experience and that's great that it worked for you, but can you tell me exactly how to reproduce that experience FOR ME! If you can, you should write a book, because shyness is a problem that affects millions of people and I'm sure it will make you rich.
But I doubt you can, which is why your argument doesn't hold much water. Now, that said, I'm not advocating that shy people should go out and do LSD. In fact, in most cases, I'd counsel against it, but I think it's a personal choice each person should make based on their own needs, desires, and beliefs. Just as it should be their choice to take any other drug, prescribed or otherwise.
Re:Regarding conciousness
on
Lysergically Yours
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Like many others here, I'm sure, I've had some experience here in the past. While many times the hallucinations might appear to be meaningless after the effects have worn off, and maybe in many senses they are meaningless, it's that they're profound and meaningful at the time that is often what's important.
In many ways, we are the sum of our experiences, whether based in "normal reality" or some altered state of it. LSD causes the reality you experience to be very profound, emotionally and psychologically, and this can lead to very important changes after the fact.
While I think there is a great deal of potential for therapeutic LSD use (in the 60s, they had fairly good success in combatting alcoholism with it), it can be equally dangerous.
In my own case, I managed to overcome a good deal of shyness through a single LSD experience, that has lasted to this day (some 18 or 19 years later). I chalk this up to the power of the emotions I felt regarding my shyness at the time. On the other hand, I know people who have been emotionally scarred for many years from "bad trips" for precisely the same reason.
As for other "uses" that are productive, there is sometimes an ability to handle abstract problem solving that can be associated with LSD experiences. In many cases, people have solved real-life problems through LSD, in fields of Architecture, Physics, and I'm sure others as well. I don't know that I would ever use it for that purpose, but I've seen a good deal of anecdotal evidence that it exists, and from my own experiences, I would tend to believe it. After all, you're simply much more open to different ways of looking at or approaching problems and sometimes that's all it takes to solve it.
It doen't need to be in direct alignment. They use computers to detect the woble in a star then they go back through the archived images manually. They could be viewing these stars for years before they see a single woble, and they already have.
Obviously you didn't RTFA. Otherwise you'd realize that the method you describe IS NOT the method they are using. They are in fact using a method of detecting the planet passing in front of the star and using the star's change in brightness to detect it.
It seems government policies and telecom deregulation (in countries like Nigeria) are often the strongest forces determining a cafe's hourly rates.
Are we really sure we want any more Nigerians on the internet? Haven't they abused it enough?
But on a more serious note, back in '98, I helped open the first two internet cafes in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Playa is a pretty big tourist destination these days. At the time, there was only one ISP in town (which I assisted at off an on as well). We started off sharing a 56k dial-up line with 8 computers at each cafe. When we first opened, we were charging a peso a minute, which is roughly $0.10/min. We were making a killing.
Well, word got out we were making bank and within 1 year of the first cafe opening, there were 26 of them in town. Then the price wars began and we eventually ended up at around 10 pesos/hr (about $1.00/hr).
The two owners of the first cafe split (because one was an alcoholic and he spent most of the company money on the most expensive booze he could find). That first cafe went out of business within a few months. Largely because of the alcoholic owner, partly because of the mice, scorpions, and other things that made it just a nasty place. But in fact, a lot of the cafes that appeared in that first year went out of business because of the price wars.
Our second cafe ended up surviving the war (and is still around today, visit Atomic Cafe on Calle 8 con Avenida 5), but largely because we made internet a secondary concern and concentrated on the bar business. There are still a couple of places that offer exclusively internet access and I have no idea how they survive. Most of the rest that survived ended up doing other things.
Anyway, that's my internet cafe story. Glad to be out of that business now. The early days were fun, though.
How many stars did they have to look at to find 100 planets passing in front of 100 stars?
Think about it. Just between the Earth and the Sun, Venus only passes between our line of sight with the sun twice every hundred years (isn't that the correct figure)? I mean, it passes by in inner orbit, but it only actually eclipses the sun twice in that period. The rest of the time, it's either above or below the sun.
Now, with Venus, we're in fairly similar planes of orbit. But with other stars, the odds of the plane being in our line of sight AND a planet happening to pass right between us and the star while they're looking, the odds of that have to be pretty damn low.
I mean, I'm sure they realize this, but I'd have to think they had to look at tens of thousands of stars to catch 100 planets passing by, at least. Am I missing something?
Not really. You are some 40 year old SAE guy in a room thinking 30 years? Great! I'll be retired by the time the shit hits the fan. After that, who gives a rats ass.
Yeah, but it's not like cars hadn't been around a lot more than 30 years by the 70s already. Did they really think we'd all be flying helicopters in 30 years? Come on.
From the article:The Society of Automotive Engineers, which established the existing VIN system in 1981 and expected it to last 30 years, has formed a committee to address the impending shortage.
Well hell, 30 years? That was pretty friggin' short-sighted. Can you say, "Digging your own grave." How about, "Making your own bed?"
And how can you come up with a 17 digit code that only lasts 30 years.
I guess the degree of automotive engineer didn't require much math in the 70s and 80s.
Bravo to you! I'm about to build a Myth TV box. It will definitely cost a bit more, but it will do so much more, it'll be worth it.
I'm getting a cool micro-ATX case that's the perfect size for a media computer. (From Athena Tech).
I'm getting a 2.4 celeron (more power than I'll need, given the Hauppauge), a 200GB hard drive, and a Hauppauge PVR 350 (does hardware encoding and decoding, so the CPU doesn't work at all). The whole thing will cost about $550 when I'm done. A bargain considering all the additional functionality MythTV provides.
And since it will be on my home network, I can watch anything I have in my collection. And there's still room for another 2 hard drives in the machine (not using the floppy) for later expansion.
It will still have 2 free PCI slots, so I can add a Hauppauge PVR 250 so that I can record channels I'm not watching as well.
And since MythTV is designed to be expandable, I can add whatever additional functionality I want. (of course there are already quite a few additional modules that do just about everything I could want.)
and it never occurred to you that the website itself has been compromised and is forwarding data to somewhere else that can't be easily traced? Such as a machine in a country with looser enforcement of technical issues?
Yeah, it occured to me actually, but since the machine has been compromised, that means it can be compromised to track the person collecting the data, and so on and so on, until you get to them. Whereas, if you have it post to a newsgroup, as I mentioned, they have NO way of tracking you, unless they're going to track everyone that reads newsgroups.
Which do you think would be safer. That's okay, take your time and think about it.
Okay, this idiot must want to get caught. To you aspiring virus/trojan writers out there: DO NOT have your virus/trojan send information to a web site. Send it to a newsgroup. Geez. Encrypt it if you must, but don't send it somewhere where you can be tracked. Send it somewhere where you can get it anonymously. Man, moron hackers out there. It's like that idiot Slashdot reported on yesterday who got caught on the extortion deal when he told them who to make the check out to.
You are correct, in theory. The problem is, in practice, that's not how users see it. And when I say users, I don't mean the technically proficient ones. I mean joe average user with no real technical knowledge of HTML. He sees it working in IE and sees it not working in Mozilla. his analysis: Mozart is broken.
I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that's the reality of the situation. You can go on all day long about it not being right, but in the end, whether it gets adopted or not is going to depend on what the joe average user thinks. Not what you, I, or some standards committee thinks.
Would you rather run INTERNET EXPLORER and have to patch your computer every other day to prevent getting slammed with the latest worm? Do you feel you can "rely" on IE? I don't.
That's a very legitimate point. I'll grant you that. But I have automatic updates set to install. I have a firewall running. I also have anti-virus software running. I have NEVER, in 23 years of computer use, been hit by a worm, trojan, or virus.
I'm sure a good part of that is just plain luck, so while you have a good point, and I know a lot of people have had some major problems, I haven't had any problems, so yes, I'd rather run IE for the moment.
Actually, Slashdot is one of the sites I had problems with. Sometimes different regions would overlap giving a pretty ugly display.
There were about a half dozen other pages.
You wrote: You have to remember, new Mozilla versions won't magically make broken markup/css work.
If IE magically makes them work, then I expect Mozilla to make them work. Keep in mind, I'm saying this from a user's point of view. Most users don't care if it's the fault of the person that designed the page. They're going to say, "Well, it worked in IE, so Mozilla must be broken." Even if the page designers screwed up, you'll never convince the users (except the technically proficient ones), that it's the fault of page designers, not if they see it working in IE.
-0.9rc is a release candidate so expect it to be buggy. In fact it's not even 1.0 so even the FireFox team considers current releases to be pre-releases.
-You can set the install directory if you select Custom in the Setup Type dialog
I recognize that pre 1.0 builds are not release builds. Hence my mention that maybe when 1.0 comes out, I'll give it another shot.
I know you can set the install directory. But you can't TYPE it. Again, that's exactly what I said in my original post. You have to browse for the directory. Why can't I simply replace the "C:" with "D:" in the default directory name? The text box is read-only. That's what I'm complaining about on that point.
Look, I'm not saying Firefox is a piece of crap, so don't get so defensive guys. I'm simply providing what I think is constructive criticism. There are things about it that I really liked, but I just don't feel it's stable enough that I can rely on it. I don't have time to go digging through bug reports and message boards every time I run into a problem with it, to find a solution. Especially given the number of problems I was running into.
I think it has a great deal of potential and I look forward to a more stable release so I can give it another try. But for the moment, I'm just going to hold off for a while.
I didn't start using Firefox until 0.8. For the most part, I loved it. The only problems I had were occasional page layout issues. Sometimes those required me to fall back on IE, which was a bit of a pain. Usually it had to do with certain web forms with multi-line text boxes that it showed way too small to be useful for writing lots of text.
Then I upgraded to the 0.9rc and something got totally hosed. Some dialog boxes would pop up with no text in them (like the download dialog). It also seemed to hose a few other things as well.
I tried uninstalling it and re-installing, but to no avail. So, for the moment, I'm sticking with IE, which is kind of sad. I mean, I loved some of the things in Firefox like the search plugins that let me search IMDB, dictionaries, and so forth. That's a cool feature. But I don't want to spend a lot of time trying to figure out why things aren't working.
Maybe when 1.0 comes out I'll give it another shot. And hopefully they'll improve the install. I particularly hate the fact that I can't just type in an install directory name, but have to go browse the directory. It defaults to C:\Program Files\Firefox and I just want to change the C: to a D: Why does that have to be so difficult?
My guess, if you've bothered to read the Wiki entry linked on the specs page, is that the answers are yes, yes, yes and yes, respectively.
Okay, first of all, why would the answers be yes, yes, yes, and yes, if "I've" read the wiki? Does my reading or not reading the Wiki change the answers?
Yeah, I know that wasn't what you meant. I'm just being facetious. The fact is, I did go into the Wiki. And maybe I'm just particularly dim, or not a Wiki expert, but I couldn't find any information very quickly, so I gave up. That's the point of my original post, though. I shouldn't have to go digging around the site just to get a basic idea of what the product is. At least, not if they want me to buy it.
I mean, the little picture looks cool and all. That tiny box with two antennas sticking out of it. But what exactly is it? You can't really tell from the web page.
Is it an access point? A router? A bridge? What? I'm sure if I spent more than 10 minutes digging through the page, I might find something, but I lost patience trying to figure it out.
If they're going to sell these things, they might try a list of the features and maybe a general description of what it is. The article post had more information than the web page.
If there are any lawyers out there, feel free to correct me, but I think the way you generally want to go in patent enforcement is to start by enforcing against small companies. Not so much to get money to sue the big boys, but because it's usually easier to win against the small ones. By winning, you establish a precedent for your patent's enforceability which makes a victory in a suit against the big boys more likely.
I'm sure the money you make doesn't hurt, of course. I mean, the big boys are going to make you pay a lot more in legal fees (more paperwork for your lawyers, more back and forth motions prior to the case, etc).
I agree with the other posters, though. We really need a better patent system because the current one is just getting abused.
Slashdot Mirror
Jack Valenti Quote: "I don't think there's really a single actor or director in the world who does not believe that if you don't combat piracy, it will devour you in the future."
I'm gonna take a stab at this one. Hmmm, let me think. Michael Moore maybe???? Hmmm.... Quentin Tarentino?
I sure hope they didn't quote him saying this after telling him Moore and Tarentino's positions.
but, wasn't decss possible only because one software player left its key out in the open? Seems to me you'd need to get hold of one of those special players if you were going to crack their partner discs.
That was how decss was cracked, but it wasn't possible only because of that. There are other methods. This was simply a very convenient one to take. It would have been cracked eventually anyway.
Seems if they're going to get pounded, then maybe they ought to do this in groups. Since the whole thing appears to be done via a table lookup, wouldn't it make sense to wait until you have, say 10 that are nearby in the table and then do all 10 at once instead of restarting the search for each one. I would imagine their throughput could go upsignificantly if they did this.
Of course, I don't know enough about how the whole thing works. Maybe I'm completely off base. I'm sure they weren't counting on getting slashdotted either.
They had to go and make the platters round. Didn't they know Seagate had a patent on round flat things with a hole in the center? Man, if it wasn't for Dunkin Donuts, they would have gotten that patent on ring-torus shaped things as well. And what would the police have to do if that had happened?
You just "get high on life." I overcame my shyness problem with a similar sort of one-time experience, but it had nothing to do with drugs, but rather a group of friends who were all "tripping" on the same wavelength in an evening.
Drugs have nothing to do with it. They're just crutches for people who don't have powerful enough imaginations.
Since you posted as an AC, I probably shouldn't even respond, but others may feel the same, so maybe it deserves a response.
I agree a drug for the purpose of overcoming shyness is certainly a crutch. That doesn't invalidate it. Taking Paxil to treat anxiety disorder is a crutch as well, but doctors prescribe it every day for precisely that purpose. In fact, taking almost any sort of drug for almost any sort of condition, is a crutch. Taking an aspirin for a headache is a crutch. Taking a multivitamin instead of eating a balanced diet with all the nutrients you need, is a crutch. So what?
But let's get away from the analogy and go right to the source. People with broken legs use crutches. They don't have to. They could walk on their broken legs, endure the pain and live with the consequence which might be lifelong problems with their legs. Or they could stay laid up in bed until the leg heals.
The point is, a crutch serves the primary purpose of expediting recovery/cure. So your point that it is a crutch is kind of meaningless.
You had your particular experience and that's great that it worked for you, but can you tell me exactly how to reproduce that experience FOR ME! If you can, you should write a book, because shyness is a problem that affects millions of people and I'm sure it will make you rich.
But I doubt you can, which is why your argument doesn't hold much water. Now, that said, I'm not advocating that shy people should go out and do LSD. In fact, in most cases, I'd counsel against it, but I think it's a personal choice each person should make based on their own needs, desires, and beliefs. Just as it should be their choice to take any other drug, prescribed or otherwise.
Like many others here, I'm sure, I've had some experience here in the past. While many times the hallucinations might appear to be meaningless after the effects have worn off, and maybe in many senses they are meaningless, it's that they're profound and meaningful at the time that is often what's important.
In many ways, we are the sum of our experiences, whether based in "normal reality" or some altered state of it. LSD causes the reality you experience to be very profound, emotionally and psychologically, and this can lead to very important changes after the fact.
While I think there is a great deal of potential for therapeutic LSD use (in the 60s, they had fairly good success in combatting alcoholism with it), it can be equally dangerous.
In my own case, I managed to overcome a good deal of shyness through a single LSD experience, that has lasted to this day (some 18 or 19 years later). I chalk this up to the power of the emotions I felt regarding my shyness at the time. On the other hand, I know people who have been emotionally scarred for many years from "bad trips" for precisely the same reason.
As for other "uses" that are productive, there is sometimes an ability to handle abstract problem solving that can be associated with LSD experiences. In many cases, people have solved real-life problems through LSD, in fields of Architecture, Physics, and I'm sure others as well. I don't know that I would ever use it for that purpose, but I've seen a good deal of anecdotal evidence that it exists, and from my own experiences, I would tend to believe it. After all, you're simply much more open to different ways of looking at or approaching problems and sometimes that's all it takes to solve it.
It doen't need to be in direct alignment. They use computers to detect the woble in a star then they go back through the archived images manually. They could be viewing these stars for years before they see a single woble, and they already have.
Obviously you didn't RTFA. Otherwise you'd realize that the method you describe IS NOT the method they are using. They are in fact using a method of detecting the planet passing in front of the star and using the star's change in brightness to detect it.
It seems government policies and telecom deregulation (in countries like Nigeria) are often the strongest forces determining a cafe's hourly rates.
Are we really sure we want any more Nigerians on the internet? Haven't they abused it enough?
But on a more serious note, back in '98, I helped open the first two internet cafes in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Playa is a pretty big tourist destination these days. At the time, there was only one ISP in town (which I assisted at off an on as well). We started off sharing a 56k dial-up line with 8 computers at each cafe. When we first opened, we were charging a peso a minute, which is roughly $0.10/min. We were making a killing.
Well, word got out we were making bank and within 1 year of the first cafe opening, there were 26 of them in town. Then the price wars began and we eventually ended up at around 10 pesos/hr (about $1.00/hr).
The two owners of the first cafe split (because one was an alcoholic and he spent most of the company money on the most expensive booze he could find). That first cafe went out of business within a few months. Largely because of the alcoholic owner, partly because of the mice, scorpions, and other things that made it just a nasty place. But in fact, a lot of the cafes that appeared in that first year went out of business because of the price wars.
Our second cafe ended up surviving the war (and is still around today, visit Atomic Cafe on Calle 8 con Avenida 5), but largely because we made internet a secondary concern and concentrated on the bar business. There are still a couple of places that offer exclusively internet access and I have no idea how they survive. Most of the rest that survived ended up doing other things.
Anyway, that's my internet cafe story. Glad to be out of that business now. The early days were fun, though.
How many stars did they have to look at to find 100 planets passing in front of 100 stars?
Think about it. Just between the Earth and the Sun, Venus only passes between our line of sight with the sun twice every hundred years (isn't that the correct figure)? I mean, it passes by in inner orbit, but it only actually eclipses the sun twice in that period. The rest of the time, it's either above or below the sun.
Now, with Venus, we're in fairly similar planes of orbit. But with other stars, the odds of the plane being in our line of sight AND a planet happening to pass right between us and the star while they're looking, the odds of that have to be pretty damn low.
I mean, I'm sure they realize this, but I'd have to think they had to look at tens of thousands of stars to catch 100 planets passing by, at least. Am I missing something?
Not really. You are some 40 year old SAE guy in a room thinking 30 years? Great! I'll be retired by the time the shit hits the fan. After that, who gives a rats ass.
Yeah, but it's not like cars hadn't been around a lot more than 30 years by the 70s already. Did they really think we'd all be flying helicopters in 30 years? Come on.
From the article:The Society of Automotive Engineers, which established the existing VIN system in 1981 and expected it to last 30 years, has formed a committee to address the impending shortage.
Well hell, 30 years? That was pretty friggin' short-sighted. Can you say, "Digging your own grave." How about, "Making your own bed?"
And how can you come up with a 17 digit code that only lasts 30 years.
I guess the degree of automotive engineer didn't require much math in the 70s and 80s.
I have the same case in my MythTV box. The power supply isn't the greatest and it's kind of loud.
;-)
I picked up one of these, and it's much quieter. Although it's still not silent, you can't hear it when you're watching TV.
Good to know. Thanks. Of course, I don't expect to hear much of anything over my Denon 1804 AVR
As a C# programmer, I frequently run searches on google with the keyword "C#" in the search. Google does a good job with it.
Microsoft's search engine on the other hand seems to toss out the "#" character which makes it pretty useless. Kind of funny given who created C#.
Guess I'll be sticking with google.
Bravo to you! I'm about to build a Myth TV box. It will definitely cost a bit more, but it will do so much more, it'll be worth it.
I'm getting a cool micro-ATX case that's the perfect size for a media computer. (From Athena Tech).
I'm getting a 2.4 celeron (more power than I'll need, given the Hauppauge), a 200GB hard drive, and a Hauppauge PVR 350 (does hardware encoding and decoding, so the CPU doesn't work at all). The whole thing will cost about $550 when I'm done. A bargain considering all the additional functionality MythTV provides.
And since it will be on my home network, I can watch anything I have in my collection. And there's still room for another 2 hard drives in the machine (not using the floppy) for later expansion.
It will still have 2 free PCI slots, so I can add a Hauppauge PVR 250 so that I can record channels I'm not watching as well.
And since MythTV is designed to be expandable, I can add whatever additional functionality I want. (of course there are already quite a few additional modules that do just about everything I could want.)
and it never occurred to you that the website itself has been compromised and is forwarding data to somewhere else that can't be easily traced? Such as a machine in a country with looser enforcement of technical issues?
Yeah, it occured to me actually, but since the machine has been compromised, that means it can be compromised to track the person collecting the data, and so on and so on, until you get to them. Whereas, if you have it post to a newsgroup, as I mentioned, they have NO way of tracking you, unless they're going to track everyone that reads newsgroups.
Which do you think would be safer. That's okay, take your time and think about it.
Okay, this idiot must want to get caught. To you aspiring virus/trojan writers out there: DO NOT have your virus/trojan send information to a web site. Send it to a newsgroup. Geez. Encrypt it if you must, but don't send it somewhere where you can be tracked. Send it somewhere where you can get it anonymously. Man, moron hackers out there. It's like that idiot Slashdot reported on yesterday who got caught on the extortion deal when he told them who to make the check out to.
You are correct, in theory. The problem is, in practice, that's not how users see it. And when I say users, I don't mean the technically proficient ones. I mean joe average user with no real technical knowledge of HTML. He sees it working in IE and sees it not working in Mozilla. his analysis: Mozart is broken.
I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that's the reality of the situation. You can go on all day long about it not being right, but in the end, whether it gets adopted or not is going to depend on what the joe average user thinks. Not what you, I, or some standards committee thinks.
Would you rather run INTERNET EXPLORER and have to patch your computer every other day to prevent getting slammed with the latest worm? Do you feel you can "rely" on IE? I don't.
That's a very legitimate point. I'll grant you that. But I have automatic updates set to install. I have a firewall running. I also have anti-virus software running. I have NEVER, in 23 years of computer use, been hit by a worm, trojan, or virus.
I'm sure a good part of that is just plain luck, so while you have a good point, and I know a lot of people have had some major problems, I haven't had any problems, so yes, I'd rather run IE for the moment.
Which sites are you refering to?
Actually, Slashdot is one of the sites I had problems with. Sometimes different regions would overlap giving a pretty ugly display.
There were about a half dozen other pages.
You wrote: You have to remember, new Mozilla versions won't magically make broken markup/css work.
If IE magically makes them work, then I expect Mozilla to make them work. Keep in mind, I'm saying this from a user's point of view. Most users don't care if it's the fault of the person that designed the page. They're going to say, "Well, it worked in IE, so Mozilla must be broken." Even if the page designers screwed up, you'll never convince the users (except the technically proficient ones), that it's the fault of page designers, not if they see it working in IE.
A few nitpicks:
-0.9rc is a release candidate so expect it to be buggy. In fact it's not even 1.0 so even the FireFox team considers current releases to be pre-releases.
-You can set the install directory if you select Custom in the Setup Type dialog
I recognize that pre 1.0 builds are not release builds. Hence my mention that maybe when 1.0 comes out, I'll give it another shot.
I know you can set the install directory. But you can't TYPE it. Again, that's exactly what I said in my original post. You have to browse for the directory. Why can't I simply replace the "C:" with "D:" in the default directory name? The text box is read-only. That's what I'm complaining about on that point.
Look, I'm not saying Firefox is a piece of crap, so don't get so defensive guys. I'm simply providing what I think is constructive criticism. There are things about it that I really liked, but I just don't feel it's stable enough that I can rely on it. I don't have time to go digging through bug reports and message boards every time I run into a problem with it, to find a solution. Especially given the number of problems I was running into.
I think it has a great deal of potential and I look forward to a more stable release so I can give it another try. But for the moment, I'm just going to hold off for a while.
I didn't start using Firefox until 0.8. For the most part, I loved it. The only problems I had were occasional page layout issues. Sometimes those required me to fall back on IE, which was a bit of a pain. Usually it had to do with certain web forms with multi-line text boxes that it showed way too small to be useful for writing lots of text.
Then I upgraded to the 0.9rc and something got totally hosed. Some dialog boxes would pop up with no text in them (like the download dialog). It also seemed to hose a few other things as well.
I tried uninstalling it and re-installing, but to no avail. So, for the moment, I'm sticking with IE, which is kind of sad. I mean, I loved some of the things in Firefox like the search plugins that let me search IMDB, dictionaries, and so forth. That's a cool feature. But I don't want to spend a lot of time trying to figure out why things aren't working.
Maybe when 1.0 comes out I'll give it another shot. And hopefully they'll improve the install. I particularly hate the fact that I can't just type in an install directory name, but have to go browse the directory. It defaults to C:\Program Files\Firefox and I just want to change the C: to a D: Why does that have to be so difficult?
My guess, if you've bothered to read the Wiki entry linked on the specs page, is that the answers are yes, yes, yes and yes, respectively.
Okay, first of all, why would the answers be yes, yes, yes, and yes, if "I've" read the wiki? Does my reading or not reading the Wiki change the answers?
Yeah, I know that wasn't what you meant. I'm just being facetious. The fact is, I did go into the Wiki. And maybe I'm just particularly dim, or not a Wiki expert, but I couldn't find any information very quickly, so I gave up. That's the point of my original post, though. I shouldn't have to go digging around the site just to get a basic idea of what the product is. At least, not if they want me to buy it.
I mean, the little picture looks cool and all. That tiny box with two antennas sticking out of it. But what exactly is it? You can't really tell from the web page.
Is it an access point? A router? A bridge? What? I'm sure if I spent more than 10 minutes digging through the page, I might find something, but I lost patience trying to figure it out.
If they're going to sell these things, they might try a list of the features and maybe a general description of what it is. The article post had more information than the web page.
If there are any lawyers out there, feel free to correct me, but I think the way you generally want to go in patent enforcement is to start by enforcing against small companies. Not so much to get money to sue the big boys, but because it's usually easier to win against the small ones. By winning, you establish a precedent for your patent's enforceability which makes a victory in a suit against the big boys more likely.
I'm sure the money you make doesn't hurt, of course. I mean, the big boys are going to make you pay a lot more in legal fees (more paperwork for your lawyers, more back and forth motions prior to the case, etc).
I agree with the other posters, though. We really need a better patent system because the current one is just getting abused.
One of the most reviled men in computers, the creator of the EBCDIC characterset continues living.