Pick your poison - Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Lynx, wget - they're all superior to IE in the sense that they are not an integral portion of the operating system, thus they pose less risk to the security of said OS.
I'd agree with your IE rant except that part. First of all IE being "part of the OS" was never a security issue. It's a myth. There's no pieces of IE running in "kernel mode". That's a myth too.
Hell, IE7 isn't even a part of the OS. It's a standalone app, and Windows Explorer uses different libraries and processes.
In essence you'll be surprised to find that as a Firefox user reading the security bulletins, there are are plenty of critical security flaws in Firefox, Opera. The main threat is running as administrator. Any browser's critical vulnearbility is as bad as a critical vulnerability in IE for that basic reason.
The solution is either to run in limited mode and suffer the consequences (namely pretty limited way of work, Windows was not designed to normally operate like this), or wait for Vista or not use Windows.
Fasterfox [mozdev.org] makes firefox load pages more quickly through various methods. The Firefox Tweak Guide [tweakfactor.com] has many options for about:config and other tips for improving your specific experience. Firefox Preloader [sourceforge.net] will make Firefox load more quickly by making Firefox do the same thing Internet Explorer does. Firefox will use system resources before being specifically called. The application will remain resident in memory like IE does, waiting for you to click the little fox. In this way, IE loads faster but slows overall system performance.
Since I use Firefox out of necessity (nice developer features), I've tried all of those.
Not only they don't speed up little, if anything, but that cause a bunch of problems.
Fasterfox tweaks your browser to work in a way non-compliant to HTTP, doesn't decrease resource usage or startup times. I've noticed no faster experience too.
The Firefox Tweak Guide is not something a casual user would tyr, but even if we forget this, it doesn't offer you to tweak anything else Fasterfox won't (pretty much).
The "preloader" causes slower Windows startup, obnoxious taskbar icon, inability to update Firefox without jumping trhough multiple hoops, no faster startup, more system resource usage and requirement to exit from Firefox in a "special" way so not to unload it.
The ammount of stigma now attached to IE has really damaged the product. If they are wise (Personal Opinion) I would scrap the entire codebase of IE and start with an entireley new one for VISTA and change the name so the product gets a new start at life. I don't know, call it Vic the Vista internet client (or Voom sounds better). I switched to firefox quite a while ago, before that, Mozilla, before that Opera and what the hey i even think i was using Netscape before IE and have never looked back. Sorry IE;).
Well, as a guy who works on actual projects and know how it works, your opinion has completely dissapointed me in Earth, so I suggest we blow it up and start from scratch.
Furthermore, your bias is obvious. Netscape for the most of its life was a terrible browser (4.x being slow and terrible support for... well HTML and CSS, comapres to IE4 at the time, and NS6/7 for being huge and slow, NS8 for being uuuugly, ad-ridden, and embedding IE).
They've been trying to build optical computing chips since the 1980s. I did a summer internship in Japan in 1990, when they were making custom batches of exotic rare-earth crystals for fiber-optic relay stations.
I was going to say the same. They keep trumpeting their chip laser technology on every keynote I've seen for years now.
There's a flaw with using lasers for integral schemes: they go in a straight direction, wires can "steer" and form more complex patterns. Of course lasers can also cross each other and wires can't.
It'll help if we see something actually working from Intel using this tech first.
If there is an exploit for Firefox, I can shrug my shoulders and use any of a dozen other browsers to look at web pages until it gets fixed. Or I can choose to continue using Firefox anyway, despite the risk. It's my choice. However, if there is an exploit in Internet Explorer, I am just plain screwed. I can't switch the goddamn thing off or remove it.
I'm getting tired of explainint this, but here we go again: do you notice the shiny E on your desktop? This is IE. Now, if you're thinking of double clicking it and visiting sites, then perform the following steps not to use IE:
It seems a fine line but I think many would consider this an exploit. A vulnerability would be a non-feature that can be exploited in some manner. I could be wrong (as far as speaking for others) but this is my take on it. Again, it seems a little like semantics but it's a line that can be defines quite well.
I'm looking forward to someone giving a definitive answer to this burning question. I can't sleep until I know if my Adobe Reader has multiple exploits or multiple vulnerabilities.
Wow. So IBM only supports Linux because it thinks it'll make them money? Next you're going to tell me that Apple only sells iPods for the same reason. Or that the purpose of a business is to make a profit.
Yes, I bow to you for being the genius you are.
Thing is some people don't realize what they are getting on when they are lured to open source software, so it's worth it that they hear it from time to time.
Open source is of course great, but like anything, too much of a good thing isn't that good. I use Linux distros for my servers and Windows for my desktops. Best of both worlds.
Ok here's another one. Now, we know our computers work with binary data: 0 and 1. But which one would you chose? Now, they both exist, but not for you. So what would it be? 1 or 0?
youTube videos might be okay on a computer screen. I'm certainly not going to spend two hours watching them on my 100" digital projector
Oh yes, yes, yes... Indeed we all have 100'' digital projectors, how could've I not thought about this before. I'm so dumb.
As a side remark, you're a victim of your 100'' digital projector. Low resolution videos look way, way better on these devices:
- conventional (could be huge, but can be small doesn't matter) CRT TV - conventional projector with normal resolution - certain plasma screens
For good or bad, those devices, with their higher accuracy and inability to adapt to lower resolutions accent the video deffects of lower resolution content:
- high resolution projectors - LCD tv-s / monitors
You see, it's how our eyes work. It's not the amount of information that matters alone, but also how it's presented to you. A conventional CRT interpolates the image on the screen in a purely analog way which is natural for our eyes and we fill the "gaps" of the resolution very well. You may be watching a YouTube video on a 21 inch CRT and not even notice for a good part of it that it's 1/2 the resolution of NTSC (this is the situation with VHS for example).
However on LCD/high end projector you need this information interpolated. The way linear/cubic digital interpolation represent a low resolution image in high resolution dislpay is way inferior to what a CRT naturally produces, our brain sees this and we perceive the video as "low resolution".
Go figure, right...
Now go buy that Ultra HDTV TV with zillion giga pixels.
We'll see how it plays out right? If resolution was the holy grail, then those crappy home-made 320x240 video companies like youTube wouldn't cost insane amounts.
Content and convenience matters more than resolution in this day and age.
When one day we're totally digital, and resolution doesn't matter as the equipment can be fed anything at all, maybe we'll see something like, say 1280x800 (WXGA) become a norm, but there's simply no hurry for this to happen just yet.
No, see you're missing the point. I don't want REAL LIFE. I want LIFELIKE.
You remind of something local journalists in my country started using way too much in news reports, odd given it's a nonsense.
They like to say that some actual event that happened in our actual world is "like a real reality show"... "Driving on the roads with your car is like a real reality show".
There should honestly be minimal intelligence requirements for one to be a reporter, I think.
Pitty money and time is spent on increasing the specs of something that is already in abundance.
As technology matures there's a race for bigger, faster, and finer. But this race is not eternal: in few years the sweet spot is hit and people are not interested in higher resolutions.
With TV resolution this sweet spot is already somewhere between DVD and EDTV, way below 1800p. So yea, don't expect "technology to catch up" in that respect, as the summary suggest, since noone cares for it to catch up in this way.
Any competent power user should have the sense to not be logging into their desktop as an admin
Any competent power user realizes there's close to no software that works in anything but admin mode. Of course Notepad works both ways, and power users only use this to produce them fangled 3D animations and interweb sites.
1) not overpriced, a MacPro can be had for cheaper than a Dell
Can a fullblown iMac be had (with monitor, keyboard, mouse and all) for cheaper than $500 which is what I bought my bro last month (A full 17' TFT with 80GB deal, Pentium 4 3GHz 512 RAM etc).
First, this is not to praise the xbox, but this is clear example where commonly available technology trumps expensive proprietary solutions. As more and more technologies get built into mainstream hardware, we'll see less "special" devices that cost arm and leg, which perform the same function.
Let's also not forget that XBOX is a loss leader though, it shows an inherent weakness in this model: you never know of your clients will go the whole path so you can return your money (will they buy games, will they buy enough games etc.).
It'll be definitely fun if laboratories start abusing PlayStation3 for a parallel FPU computations.. I mean we know most of it is a trick to demonstrate how magically powerful PS3 is.. But imagine if this indeed happens: those scientist won't buy games nor pay monthly fees for online services. They'll just keep stacking PS machines which are bought at a loss from Sony and use them for something completely different.
I suspect this is how Apple's computer branch will end, but of course it's just my opinion, not a prediction (or trying to flame).
In mid 199x, I remember buying a PC Magazine which had review of lots of cool things, among with was the latest SGI machine (I think it was SGI Octane 2, but not sure, maybe it was the first one). It had some cool 3D shots, granted, but Glide and OpenGL already had a firm ground and DirectX was just becoming popular as well.
I was just a kid, but back then I honestly looked at the price and though "wow, that's kinda nice but why would I buy this overpriced proprietary machinery versus a simple PC?". Most 3D pro-s still wanted their Octane though, because of its status symbol and the cool factor (yea and maybe because it was somewhat better than the PC technoogy at the time).
I think the same for Apple computers now. Especially with Vista on the horizon (yea you can tell me how stupid Aero is, and I would say: yea it is, but users won't see it this way), I truly wonder who would buy this overpriced proprietary machine versus a simple PC?
I suggest you take your own advice and never post here again. For what it is worth, your post made less of a difference than the hundreds that are on topic... food for thought.
Of course they are on topic. There is only one topic here: Google rules, Linux rules, Microsoft/RIAA/MPAA/Sony sucks. The harder thing is being not on topic.
Ok I announce I'm officially sick if silly biased "articles" to which the only purpose is to generate flamewars, visits, and ad revenue from clueless folks who come here to comment on the same stuff every day thinking their written opinion makes a difference.
Hmm, so I should trust MS to know what content I want them to "clean"? No thanks. MS has a lot to do to earn back my trust and I would bet the same goes for many other computer users.
What can I say except I'd hate to live in your isolated little made up "omg MS is coming to get me" world.
No matter what the society turns to be, there'll be always people to build inexplicably complex and ridiculous conspiracy theories that all link to the same "ultimate" enemy. Does it make you feel smarter that you saw this intricate plan of Microsoft to ban your blog noone gives a damn about either way?
But it's really not that cool to throw unsubstantiated FUD around as it used to be. We call it trolling, and it's mostly unwelcome.
Slashdot Mirror
For the younger ones in the audience, Vim is a superset of vi, which was originally written by Bill Joy.
:P
For even the younger in our audience, let's learn reading together! This is the English alphabet:
A B C D E F G H I J K M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z
don't forget to mod me informative
Pick your poison - Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Lynx, wget - they're all superior to IE in the sense that they are not an integral portion of the operating system, thus they pose less risk to the security of said OS.
I'd agree with your IE rant except that part. First of all IE being "part of the OS" was never a security issue. It's a myth. There's no pieces of IE running in "kernel mode". That's a myth too.
Hell, IE7 isn't even a part of the OS. It's a standalone app, and Windows Explorer uses different libraries and processes.
In essence you'll be surprised to find that as a Firefox user reading the security bulletins, there are are plenty of critical security flaws in Firefox, Opera. The main threat is running as administrator. Any browser's critical vulnearbility is as bad as a critical vulnerability in IE for that basic reason.
The solution is either to run in limited mode and suffer the consequences (namely pretty limited way of work, Windows was not designed to normally operate like this), or wait for Vista or not use Windows.
I guess pick your own way out of this.
Fasterfox [mozdev.org] makes firefox load pages more quickly through various methods.
The Firefox Tweak Guide [tweakfactor.com] has many options for about:config and other tips for improving your specific experience.
Firefox Preloader [sourceforge.net] will make Firefox load more quickly by making Firefox do the same thing Internet Explorer does. Firefox will use system resources before being specifically called. The application will remain resident in memory like IE does, waiting for you to click the little fox. In this way, IE loads faster but slows overall system performance.
Since I use Firefox out of necessity (nice developer features), I've tried all of those.
Not only they don't speed up little, if anything, but that cause a bunch of problems.
Fasterfox tweaks your browser to work in a way non-compliant to HTTP, doesn't decrease resource usage or startup times. I've noticed no faster experience too.
The Firefox Tweak Guide is not something a casual user would tyr, but even if we forget this, it doesn't offer you to tweak anything else Fasterfox won't (pretty much).
The "preloader" causes slower Windows startup, obnoxious taskbar icon, inability to update Firefox without jumping trhough multiple hoops, no faster startup, more system resource usage and requirement to exit from Firefox in a "special" way so not to unload it.
No thanks.
The ammount of stigma now attached to IE has really damaged the product. If they are wise (Personal Opinion) I would scrap the entire codebase of IE and start with an entireley new one for VISTA and change the name so the product gets a new start at life. I don't know, call it Vic the Vista internet client (or Voom sounds better). I switched to firefox quite a while ago, before that, Mozilla, before that Opera and what the hey i even think i was using Netscape before IE and have never looked back. Sorry IE ;).
Well, as a guy who works on actual projects and know how it works, your opinion has completely dissapointed me in Earth, so I suggest we blow it up and start from scratch.
Furthermore, your bias is obvious. Netscape for the most of its life was a terrible browser (4.x being slow and terrible support for... well HTML and CSS, comapres to IE4 at the time, and NS6/7 for being huge and slow, NS8 for being uuuugly, ad-ridden, and embedding IE).
They've been trying to build optical computing chips since the 1980s. I did a summer internship in Japan in 1990, when they were making custom batches of exotic rare-earth crystals for fiber-optic relay stations.
I was going to say the same. They keep trumpeting their chip laser technology on every keynote I've seen for years now.
There's a flaw with using lasers for integral schemes: they go in a straight direction, wires can "steer" and form more complex patterns. Of course lasers can also cross each other and wires can't.
It'll help if we see something actually working from Intel using this tech first.
If there is an exploit for Firefox, I can shrug my shoulders and use any of a dozen other browsers to look at web pages until it gets fixed. Or I can choose to continue using Firefox anyway, despite the risk. It's my choice. However, if there is an exploit in Internet Explorer, I am just plain screwed. I can't switch the goddamn thing off or remove it.
I'm getting tired of explainint this, but here we go again: do you notice the shiny E on your desktop? This is IE. Now, if you're thinking of double clicking it and visiting sites, then perform the following steps not to use IE:
1. do not double-click the blue E.
Wish you good luck!
It seems a fine line but I think many would consider this an exploit. A vulnerability would be a non-feature that can be exploited in some manner. I could be wrong (as far as speaking for others) but this is my take on it. Again, it seems a little like semantics but it's a line that can be defines quite well.
I'm looking forward to someone giving a definitive answer to this burning question. I can't sleep until I know if my Adobe Reader has multiple exploits or multiple vulnerabilities.
Wow. So IBM only supports Linux because it thinks it'll make them money? Next you're going to tell me that Apple only sells iPods for the same reason. Or that the purpose of a business is to make a profit.
Yes, I bow to you for being the genius you are.
Thing is some people don't realize what they are getting on when they are lured to open source software, so it's worth it that they hear it from time to time.
Open source is of course great, but like anything, too much of a good thing isn't that good. I use Linux distros for my servers and Windows for my desktops. Best of both worlds.
So I click "Worst Site #1" link directly.
And what opens? PC World. With a bunch of floating flash ads over the article. No wonder.
Ok here's another one. Now, we know our computers work with binary data: 0 and 1.
But which one would you chose? Now, they both exist, but not for you. So what would it be? 1 or 0?
Stay tuned for more pointless polls and 11.
youTube videos might be okay on a computer screen. I'm certainly not going to spend two hours watching them on my 100" digital projector
Oh yes, yes, yes... Indeed we all have 100'' digital projectors, how could've I not thought about this before. I'm so dumb.
As a side remark, you're a victim of your 100'' digital projector. Low resolution videos look way, way better on these devices:
- conventional (could be huge, but can be small doesn't matter) CRT TV
- conventional projector with normal resolution
- certain plasma screens
For good or bad, those devices, with their higher accuracy and inability to adapt to lower resolutions accent the video deffects of lower resolution content:
- high resolution projectors
- LCD tv-s / monitors
You see, it's how our eyes work. It's not the amount of information that matters alone, but also how it's presented to you. A conventional CRT interpolates the image on the screen in a purely analog way which is natural for our eyes and we fill the "gaps" of the resolution very well. You may be watching a YouTube video on a 21 inch CRT and not even notice for a good part of it that it's 1/2 the resolution of NTSC (this is the situation with VHS for example).
However on LCD/high end projector you need this information interpolated. The way linear/cubic digital interpolation represent a low resolution image in high resolution dislpay is way inferior to what a CRT naturally produces, our brain sees this and we perceive the video as "low resolution".
Go figure, right...
Now go buy that Ultra HDTV TV with zillion giga pixels.
I beg to differ.
We'll see how it plays out right? If resolution was the holy grail, then those crappy home-made 320x240 video companies like youTube wouldn't cost insane amounts.
Content and convenience matters more than resolution in this day and age.
When one day we're totally digital, and resolution doesn't matter as the equipment can be fed anything at all, maybe we'll see something like, say 1280x800 (WXGA) become a norm, but there's simply no hurry for this to happen just yet.
No, see you're missing the point. I don't want REAL LIFE. I want LIFELIKE.
You remind of something local journalists in my country started using way too much in news reports, odd given it's a nonsense.
They like to say that some actual event that happened in our actual world is "like a real reality show"...
"Driving on the roads with your car is like a real reality show".
There should honestly be minimal intelligence requirements for one to be a reporter, I think.
Pitty money and time is spent on increasing the specs of something that is already in abundance.
As technology matures there's a race for bigger, faster, and finer. But this race is not eternal: in few years the sweet spot is hit and people are not interested in higher resolutions.
With TV resolution this sweet spot is already somewhere between DVD and EDTV, way below 1800p. So yea, don't expect "technology to catch up" in that respect, as the summary suggest, since noone cares for it to catch up in this way.
Thus poving again that no press coverage is good press coverage.
But I'm not sure it was that way.
How exactly does one Australian newspaper with a circulation of 365,000 (Wikipedia) count as the mainstream media?
Slashdot has spoken.
Maybe take a peek at the Wiki entry [wikipedia.org] about the cell processor for a good background of what it is capable of.
Wow... wow... We screwed up. Boy, are our faced red! Hehehe.
We're switching back to PowerPC in 2007 then.. Yea..
-- Steve Jobs
Any competent power user should have the sense to not be logging into their desktop as an admin
Any competent power user realizes there's close to no software that works in anything but admin mode. Of course Notepad works both ways, and power users only use this to produce them fangled 3D animations and interweb sites.
1) not overpriced, a MacPro can be had for cheaper than a Dell
Can a fullblown iMac be had (with monitor, keyboard, mouse and all) for cheaper than $500 which is what I bought my bro last month (A full 17' TFT with 80GB deal, Pentium 4 3GHz 512 RAM etc).
First, this is not to praise the xbox, but this is clear example where commonly available technology trumps expensive proprietary solutions. As more and more technologies get built into mainstream hardware, we'll see less "special" devices that cost arm and leg, which perform the same function.
Let's also not forget that XBOX is a loss leader though, it shows an inherent weakness in this model: you never know of your clients will go the whole path so you can return your money (will they buy games, will they buy enough games etc.).
It'll be definitely fun if laboratories start abusing PlayStation3 for a parallel FPU computations.. I mean we know most of it is a trick to demonstrate how magically powerful PS3 is.. But imagine if this indeed happens: those scientist won't buy games nor pay monthly fees for online services. They'll just keep stacking PS machines which are bought at a loss from Sony and use them for something completely different.
I suspect this is how Apple's computer branch will end, but of course it's just my opinion, not a prediction (or trying to flame).
In mid 199x, I remember buying a PC Magazine which had review of lots of cool things, among with was the latest SGI machine (I think it was SGI Octane 2, but not sure, maybe it was the first one). It had some cool 3D shots, granted, but Glide and OpenGL already had a firm ground and DirectX was just becoming popular as well.
I was just a kid, but back then I honestly looked at the price and though "wow, that's kinda nice but why would I buy this overpriced proprietary machinery versus a simple PC?". Most 3D pro-s still wanted their Octane though, because of its status symbol and the cool factor (yea and maybe because it was somewhat better than the PC technoogy at the time).
I think the same for Apple computers now. Especially with Vista on the horizon (yea you can tell me how stupid Aero is, and I would say: yea it is, but users won't see it this way), I truly wonder who would buy this overpriced proprietary machine versus a simple PC?
I suggest you take your own advice and never post here again. For what it is worth, your post made less of a difference than the hundreds that are on topic... food for thought.
Of course they are on topic. There is only one topic here: Google rules, Linux rules, Microsoft/RIAA/MPAA/Sony sucks.
The harder thing is being not on topic.
Ok I announce I'm officially sick if silly biased "articles" to which the only purpose is to generate flamewars, visits, and ad revenue from clueless folks who come here to comment on the same stuff every day thinking their written opinion makes a difference.
Hmm, so I should trust MS to know what content I want them to "clean"? No thanks. MS has a lot to do to earn back my trust and I would bet the same goes for many other computer users.
What can I say except I'd hate to live in your isolated little made up "omg MS is coming to get me" world.
No matter what the society turns to be, there'll be always people to build inexplicably complex and ridiculous conspiracy theories that all link to the same "ultimate" enemy. Does it make you feel smarter that you saw this intricate plan of Microsoft to ban your blog noone gives a damn about either way?
But it's really not that cool to throw unsubstantiated FUD around as it used to be. We call it trolling, and it's mostly unwelcome.
Every time I ask the customer to right-click on something and the context menu appears, the customer just freaks out.
Lesson learned: don't work with clients who have a right-click phobia.