Are people somehow missing the point??? The article was written by the CEO of an ISP that is NOT doing those things (they're also not doing usage caps, which people would discover if they read the other blog posts -- see Mar 23).
(Disclaimer: they're also my ISP. They're amazingly clueful, and will even give their subscribers a limited shell account, although you do have to ask for it. It's great for an ssh web proxy, to help prevent hijackings at public wifi access points. )
It's virtually impossible to replicate the functionality and ease-of-use of gmail. However, I've recently looked into this, and here are my comments (note: I haven't yet implemented any of this, so take this with a large boulder of salt):
* For obvious reasons, you need an IMAP server. Dovecot is among the most compliant and best (my ISP happens to use it:-). Should you want to choose something else, make sure you check out the IMAP server compliancy page.
* You do, of course need an MTA like postfix or exim, but choosing one may be a matter of personal preference.
* You're unlikely to find a spam filtering solution as good as gmail's (it's crowd-sourced, after all).
* Finding a replacement for gmail filtering rules is a big problem. You'll probably have to go with procmail.
(However, as a programmer, I happen to prefer something with a bit more power and flexibilty, and so I'd probably port over the ancient-but-likely-still-usable "deliver" mail handling program. Deliver takes mail received from postfix, exim, or sendmail and feeds it to a program that you write (a shell script, ruby script, C++ program, or whatever you like). Your program then tells deliver what to do with the message (deliver it normally, refile it, delete it, etc., etc.). Also, since it's a program, you can do behind-the-scenes stuff like saving of attachments, vacation autoreplies, mail archiving, etc., etc.. It's the ultimate in power in flexibility, if you can program.)
However, this still doesn't address the issues of contacts and calendars. Unfortunately, there's no good solution for these:
* You might want to check out Zarafa. The free community version seems decent, as long as you're happy with access via the web or iPhone. Mail filtering capabilities are limited, and you'll have to use Outlook if you want to use a desktop client for contacts or calendars (the free version limits you to three Outlook users). However, Thunderbird might be usable via CalDAV for calendars and z-sync for contacts.
* As others have mentioned, Zimbra is a possibility. However, if you need iPhone support, it appears to be horribly expensive for home use -- as in multiple hundreds of dollars expensive. From that I understand, the Zimbra network edition, starter version is the cheapest iPhone-supporting deal, at ~$400/year or $840 for a perpetual license.
Why? Some states require that companies notify people when their data is stolen, as well as sometimes requiring identity theft protection (e.g., credit reports or alerts) or somesuch. This can get pretty expensive, and so it's probably cheaper to just encrypt everything. They're not being altruistic -- they're saving money. It wouldn't surprise me if some executive got a bonus for saving the company money...
That was my first thought, too. However, the extra radiation, while significantly higher than normal, doesn't seem all that high; when he flys, he's probably getting just an extra ~3 day's worth of his normal radiation exposure.
(Assuming exposure can be fudged like this: from xkcd, a flight from New York to Los Angeles gives you maybe an extra 4 day's worth of your normal daily radiation exposure. Distance from NY to LA is ~ 2462miles. 1e6miles/6000 flights => ~1667miles/flight. 1667/2462 => ~0.69. So, an "average flight" gives him a bit less than 3 day's worth of radiation.)
All of the major addons appear to be functional in 5.0, but some very-useful but apparently little-used ones haven't been updated. "Find All" is one such addon (given how useful it is, I'm surprised that it has so few downloads).
Yes, especially basic English. Programmers may have to design these things called, "customer-facing GUI dialog boxes", and it's not acceptable for a (native-English-speaking) programmer to pop up an error dialog that says, "U didnt enter numbr". Proofread your work, please.
Also, these general-breadth classes will, hopefully, help them improve their social skills. At some time or another, programmers will often have to work in teams, or with customers, and good social skills are needed. I don't care how good a programmer you are; if you cause friction and p*ss off a lot of your co-workers, you're not likely to last long.
I don't know if this is a fluke, but my old shortcut continued to work after upgrading to the latest (windows) iTunes (well, the icon was missing/defaulted, but double-clicking on the old shortcut started iTunes). I was pleasantly surprised.
I just can't wait for the cloud bubble to burst so we can go back to having traditional software again.
I don't think it's likely to burst -- cloud-based data is just too useful (assuming, of course, that you have an internet connection and sufficient bandwidth, which can be pretty big assumptions). John Gruber, of all people, makes some pretty good points on the upcoming client-in-a-web-browser (Google) and client-as-a-native-app (Apple) wars: http://daringfireball.net/2011/06/its_all_software
I just used the Safeway home delivery for the first time, a couple of weeks ago, and I'm happy with my experience. While the delivery charge was $7 (but can go up to $13 for a 1-hour delivery window or certain times of the day), I figured that the $7 was worth it for my time and gas. A big plus was that (in my area, at least) the delivery driver refused any tip, and so that makes home delivery fairly competitive with doing the shopping yourself. You do, of course, need to do a fairly large order to make this worthwhile.
The biggest con is probably that the selection is fairly mainstream, with only some ethnic groceries. Other, local grocery stores in my area have a better selection for some items. Example: there are some really good local bakeries in my area, and local grocers/delis sometimes carry this incredibly yummy garlic/cheese sourdough bread loaf, which Safeway just doesn't have.
But the idea that delivering groceries is a dumb one is just absurd.
Delivering groceries is not absurd, but the infrastructure needed to support this is likely absurdly expensive. Existing grocery chains like Safeway have a huge advantage in that they already have most of the infrastructure needed to support home delivery (and, as you know, Safeway already does this). For them, it's probably just a matter of creating a web storefront tied into local inventory, and hiring some delivery drivers/stockclerks.
(Side note: Amazon probably needs to resolve the internet sales tax issue, before doing a wide-scale rollout. Otherwise, it'll probably be impossible for Amazon to use the "pull-out" threat.)
Nope, FF4 definitely has some memory issues. It doesn't matter if it's a real leak or a matter of memory not being freed, but people are definitely seeing process growth over time. Here's one example for windows: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=645633
Things to note:
This is reproducible on a fresh/brand new/vanilla installation of FF4. No extensions are needed. None. It depends upon the URLs visited; unfortunately, gmail seems to be one of them.
Due to way FF is designed, the process size will grow somewhat over time. However, the size should eventually stabilize (stop growing). In some cases, unfortunately, the process size just grows and grows. I've personally seen an average growth of around 1MB/minute. This may not seem like a lot, but it's an huge issue if you leave FF4 running all the time.
You can also package up ruby and python scripts into standalone.exe's, that do NOT need installed ruby or python interpreters on the target system. These standalone executables are very slow to start up, though.
And that could still be related to the above-mentioned gmail issue -- with this, once you leave FF4 running long enough, the garbage collector should start sucking up lots of resources (e.g., 20% cpu).
If you're using FF4 and gmail, there's a known issue (which might also be in FF3.6) where lots of memory are consumed: Bug 497808. On my system, I can start up a pristine FF4 installation, open one tab on my gmail account, and FF4 will be sucking up 1-2GB of private space (win7 x64) after a day or so (leaving it open, not minimized). From the comments, it might be a gmail bug.
Before the official release, I ran the various betas to check on my extensions, and virtually all of them worked in the final release, which was a pleasant surprise (and I have over 30+ extensions loaded). Also, I was using Palemoon as my main browser, and being able to run that, alongside the FF4 beta, helped, too. Of course, few extensions worked at first, but they were ported in the weeks up to the final release. The only major one which didn't work was Scrapbook Plus, but the original Scrapbook is still well-maintained (and working with FF4), and so I just went back to that.
The best shot so far has been the Xoom, which looks excellent, but is $799. As good as the iPad 2, but more expensive than the comparable model (by $70) and *a lot* more expensive than the non-3G ones (one of the few times Apple has lower-spec options and competitors don't if you really don't want the 3G).
I am doing the opposite. GMail is just a POP3 client for me.
Going off on a slight tangent, one of the big advantages of IMAP is that you can actually restore mail back to gmail. For example, if you use Thunderbird to backup gmail, restoring is basically click-and-drag from Thunderbird back to gmail. Caveats:
You have to do this manually for each gmail label. This can become tedious if you have a lot of labels.
Your gmail usage will increase by some factor of "N". For example, before, if you had a single message with four labels, you only had one copy of the message. However, if you use IMAP to restore, you'll end up with four copies (one for each label -- and I'm not sure how many copies "All mail" will get).
Alternatively, if you are using windows and have a recent processor, you might want to check out palemoon, which is a version of FF3.6.X highly optimized for newer processors. It's faster at the expense of older, slower processors (e.g., palemoon will not run on an Athlon XP and others). It does use a separate profile area, though. While there is a tool for copying an existing FF3 profile into palemoon, there is no way to keep the two synchronized.
My experiences are even worse than yours. FF4b9 crashes on me right at startup. I assume that one of the (few) extensions is causing this, but I'm too lazy to go into safe mode and debug it. It is a beta, after all, and so I'll just wait for the next beta (I did let FF send off, oh, maybe 20 crash reports).
In the meantime, I'll stick with pale moon, which is a version of FF3.6.X highly optimized for modern processors and Windows. It runs significantly faster than regular FF, since it doesn't have to support older processors (e.g., Athlon XP and others). If you have a newer processor and use Windows, check it out. It's still not as fast as chrome, but it's nicer than plain FF. (NOTE: it has its own profile location, which is different from FF's. While you can use a tool to import your existing FF profile into palemoon, note there is no way to keep them synchronized.)
On the other hand, if you're willing to be careful (and not subject the glasses to temperature extremes), the anti-reflection coating is quite nice. I've had progressives with the coating for 2+ years, and the coating is largely intact and unblemished. The only issues are a couple of tiny scratches -- one caused by kleenex (do NOT use kleenex to clean coated lenses) and the other caused either by kleenex or a cotton shirt. I now clean my glasses by doing:
Rinsing under water (sometimes hot -- I've never had problems with hot water, but maybe I'm lucky). Gently shake off excess water.
Spraying on a mixture of 1/4 isopropyl alcohol and 3/4s distilled water. You can often get empty spray bottles (small ones, around 1-3oz) from the drugstore, or you can sometimes refill the "glasses cleaner" sprayers sometimes given out by optometrists.
Wiping/drying with a microfiber cloth -- not the ones that you use to wipe your car, but the small ones designed for glasses and camera lenses. While you can get these from optometrists, they tend to be expensive. You can often get them cheaper from the drugstore or online. Do not use anything made from plant products to wipe the lenses, as these products appear to scratch the coating. This includes kleenex and cotton shirts. I don't know if polyester is safe, but I generally avoid everything but microfiber cloths (many "polyester" clothing are a blend of polyester and cotton, and the cotton can probably scratch).
I do this once or twice a week, and my coatings are still virtually as good as new.
Actually plan pricing is yet to be announced, and so Verizon could still drop the unlimited data, or charge a higher-than-current fee for it. (Personally, I do hope the plan structure for current smartphones is used.)
Slashdot Mirror
Are people somehow missing the point??? The article was written by the CEO of an ISP that is NOT doing those things (they're also not doing usage caps, which people would discover if they read the other blog posts -- see Mar 23).
(Disclaimer: they're also my ISP. They're amazingly clueful, and will even give their subscribers a limited shell account, although you do have to ask for it. It's great for an ssh web proxy, to help prevent hijackings at public wifi access points. )
It's virtually impossible to replicate the functionality and ease-of-use of gmail. However, I've recently looked into this, and here are my comments (note: I haven't yet implemented any of this, so take this with a large boulder of salt):
* For obvious reasons, you need an IMAP server. Dovecot is among the most compliant and best (my ISP happens to use it :-). Should you want to choose something else, make sure you check out the IMAP server compliancy page.
* For push email on the iPhone, z-push seems to work, and people have gotten it to work with dovecot (note: this is a bit old, and so these instructions might need some tweaking).
* You do, of course need an MTA like postfix or exim, but choosing one may be a matter of personal preference.
* You're unlikely to find a spam filtering solution as good as gmail's (it's crowd-sourced, after all).
* Finding a replacement for gmail filtering rules is a big problem. You'll probably have to go with procmail.
(However, as a programmer, I happen to prefer something with a bit more power and flexibilty, and so I'd probably port over the ancient-but-likely-still-usable "deliver" mail handling program. Deliver takes mail received from postfix, exim, or sendmail and feeds it to a program that you write (a shell script, ruby script, C++ program, or whatever you like). Your program then tells deliver what to do with the message (deliver it normally, refile it, delete it, etc., etc.). Also, since it's a program, you can do behind-the-scenes stuff like saving of attachments, vacation autoreplies, mail archiving, etc., etc.. It's the ultimate in power in flexibility, if you can program.)
However, this still doesn't address the issues of contacts and calendars. Unfortunately, there's no good solution for these:
* You might want to check out Zarafa. The free community version seems decent, as long as you're happy with access via the web or iPhone. Mail filtering capabilities are limited, and you'll have to use Outlook if you want to use a desktop client for contacts or calendars (the free version limits you to three Outlook users). However, Thunderbird might be usable via CalDAV for calendars and z-sync for contacts.
* As others have mentioned, Zimbra is a possibility. However, if you need iPhone support, it appears to be horribly expensive for home use -- as in multiple hundreds of dollars expensive. From that I understand, the Zimbra network edition, starter version is the cheapest iPhone-supporting deal, at ~$400/year or $840 for a perpetual license.
Why? Some states require that companies notify people when their data is stolen, as well as sometimes requiring identity theft protection (e.g., credit reports or alerts) or somesuch. This can get pretty expensive, and so it's probably cheaper to just encrypt everything. They're not being altruistic -- they're saving money. It wouldn't surprise me if some executive got a bonus for saving the company money ...
"Good luck, I'm behind SEVEN ROT13s!"
demonstrably incorrect.
I thought it was something like ROT26 or somesuch.
I'd guess that the suspension was caused by the mere existence of a double-quote character.
That was my first thought, too. However, the extra radiation, while significantly higher than normal, doesn't seem all that high; when he flys, he's probably getting just an extra ~3 day's worth of his normal radiation exposure.
(Assuming exposure can be fudged like this: from xkcd, a flight from New York to Los Angeles gives you maybe an extra 4 day's worth of your normal daily radiation exposure. Distance from NY to LA is ~ 2462miles. 1e6miles/6000 flights => ~1667miles/flight. 1667/2462 => ~0.69. So, an "average flight" gives him a bit less than 3 day's worth of radiation.)
All of the major addons appear to be functional in 5.0, but some very-useful but apparently little-used ones haven't been updated. "Find All" is one such addon (given how useful it is, I'm surprised that it has so few downloads).
Yes, especially basic English. Programmers may have to design these things called, "customer-facing GUI dialog boxes", and it's not acceptable for a (native-English-speaking) programmer to pop up an error dialog that says, "U didnt enter numbr". Proofread your work, please.
Also, these general-breadth classes will, hopefully, help them improve their social skills. At some time or another, programmers will often have to work in teams, or with customers, and good social skills are needed. I don't care how good a programmer you are; if you cause friction and p*ss off a lot of your co-workers, you're not likely to last long.
I don't know if this is a fluke, but my old shortcut continued to work after upgrading to the latest (windows) iTunes (well, the icon was missing/defaulted, but double-clicking on the old shortcut started iTunes). I was pleasantly surprised.
I just can't wait for the cloud bubble to burst so we can go back to having traditional software again.
I don't think it's likely to burst -- cloud-based data is just too useful (assuming, of course, that you have an internet connection and sufficient bandwidth, which can be pretty big assumptions). John Gruber, of all people, makes some pretty good points on the upcoming client-in-a-web-browser (Google) and client-as-a-native-app (Apple) wars: http://daringfireball.net/2011/06/its_all_software
I just used the Safeway home delivery for the first time, a couple of weeks ago, and I'm happy with my experience. While the delivery charge was $7 (but can go up to $13 for a 1-hour delivery window or certain times of the day), I figured that the $7 was worth it for my time and gas. A big plus was that (in my area, at least) the delivery driver refused any tip, and so that makes home delivery fairly competitive with doing the shopping yourself. You do, of course, need to do a fairly large order to make this worthwhile.
The biggest con is probably that the selection is fairly mainstream, with only some ethnic groceries. Other, local grocery stores in my area have a better selection for some items. Example: there are some really good local bakeries in my area, and local grocers/delis sometimes carry this incredibly yummy garlic/cheese sourdough bread loaf, which Safeway just doesn't have.
But the idea that delivering groceries is a dumb one is just absurd.
Delivering groceries is not absurd, but the infrastructure needed to support this is likely absurdly expensive. Existing grocery chains like Safeway have a huge advantage in that they already have most of the infrastructure needed to support home delivery (and, as you know, Safeway already does this). For them, it's probably just a matter of creating a web storefront tied into local inventory, and hiring some delivery drivers/stockclerks.
(Side note: Amazon probably needs to resolve the internet sales tax issue, before doing a wide-scale rollout. Otherwise, it'll probably be impossible for Amazon to use the "pull-out" threat.)
Nope, FF4 definitely has some memory issues. It doesn't matter if it's a real leak or a matter of memory not being freed, but people are definitely seeing process growth over time. Here's one example for windows: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=645633
Things to note:
You can also package up ruby and python scripts into standalone .exe's, that do NOT need installed ruby or python interpreters on the target system. These standalone executables are very slow to start up, though.
And that could still be related to the above-mentioned gmail issue -- with this, once you leave FF4 running long enough, the garbage collector should start sucking up lots of resources (e.g., 20% cpu).
If you're using FF4 and gmail, there's a known issue (which might also be in FF3.6) where lots of memory are consumed: Bug 497808. On my system, I can start up a pristine FF4 installation, open one tab on my gmail account, and FF4 will be sucking up 1-2GB of private space (win7 x64) after a day or so (leaving it open, not minimized). From the comments, it might be a gmail bug.
Let's hope it gets addressed soon.
Before the official release, I ran the various betas to check on my extensions, and virtually all of them worked in the final release, which was a pleasant surprise (and I have over 30+ extensions loaded). Also, I was using Palemoon as my main browser, and being able to run that, alongside the FF4 beta, helped, too. Of course, few extensions worked at first, but they were ported in the weeks up to the final release. The only major one which didn't work was Scrapbook Plus, but the original Scrapbook is still well-maintained (and working with FF4), and so I just went back to that.
For the lazy, you can check your addon compatibility here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/compatibility/report
Hehe, the Register is one place that I intentionally avoid.
The best shot so far has been the Xoom, which looks excellent, but is $799. As good as the iPad 2, but more expensive than the comparable model (by $70) and *a lot* more expensive than the non-3G ones (one of the few times Apple has lower-spec options and competitors don't if you really don't want the 3G).
While the iPad2 will probably win out, the Xoom isn't quite that expensive, if you want 3G (and many people do). You can get the Xoom for $600 wiith 2-year contract. Also, I'm not sure, but, if you're a Costco member, Costco appears to be selling the Xoom with a 1-year commitment for $640 (part of the page says "1-year", but another part says "2-year" -- I should walk into the nearby Costco and ask)..
Fondleslab? Oh, god, that's brilliant. It almost sounds like faux-German. Bravo, sir.
Bravo^2. We have a new meme. :-)
I am doing the opposite. GMail is just a POP3 client for me.
Going off on a slight tangent, one of the big advantages of IMAP is that you can actually restore mail back to gmail. For example, if you use Thunderbird to backup gmail, restoring is basically click-and-drag from Thunderbird back to gmail. Caveats:
Alternatively, if you are using windows and have a recent processor, you might want to check out palemoon, which is a version of FF3.6.X highly optimized for newer processors. It's faster at the expense of older, slower processors (e.g., palemoon will not run on an Athlon XP and others). It does use a separate profile area, though. While there is a tool for copying an existing FF3 profile into palemoon, there is no way to keep the two synchronized.
My experiences are even worse than yours. FF4b9 crashes on me right at startup. I assume that one of the (few) extensions is causing this, but I'm too lazy to go into safe mode and debug it. It is a beta, after all, and so I'll just wait for the next beta (I did let FF send off, oh, maybe 20 crash reports).
In the meantime, I'll stick with pale moon, which is a version of FF3.6.X highly optimized for modern processors and Windows. It runs significantly faster than regular FF, since it doesn't have to support older processors (e.g., Athlon XP and others). If you have a newer processor and use Windows, check it out. It's still not as fast as chrome, but it's nicer than plain FF. (NOTE: it has its own profile location, which is different from FF's. While you can use a tool to import your existing FF profile into palemoon, note there is no way to keep them synchronized.)
On the other hand, if you're willing to be careful (and not subject the glasses to temperature extremes), the anti-reflection coating is quite nice. I've had progressives with the coating for 2+ years, and the coating is largely intact and unblemished. The only issues are a couple of tiny scratches -- one caused by kleenex (do NOT use kleenex to clean coated lenses) and the other caused either by kleenex or a cotton shirt. I now clean my glasses by doing:
I do this once or twice a week, and my coatings are still virtually as good as new.
Actually plan pricing is yet to be announced, and so Verizon could still drop the unlimited data, or charge a higher-than-current fee for it. (Personally, I do hope the plan structure for current smartphones is used.)