linux, problem solved.
Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control
91–100 of 311 posts
Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
NaCl and Dart aren't Web standards.
I agree. And neither is WebSQL. I was speaking to the "approach to Web Standards", not actual Web Standards. My point being that Moz used (IMO) conjecture and FUD to roadblock those technologies. No attempt on their part to experiment with those technologies and prove their value. In return, we've got instead IndexedDB over WebSQL (which many devs choose to wrap), asm.js over NaCl (which v8 team as shown doesn't requ…
"we've got instead IndexedDB over WebSQL (which many devs choose to wrap)"
It doesn't matter how developers choose to use IndexedDB, what does is for a Web standard to be sane and WebSQL never was. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9978713
"asm.js over NaCl (which v8 team as shown doesn't require a special compiler mode to optimize for)"
I don't see how not requiring a special compiler is an argument against it.
"ES5/ES5.1/ES6/ES7 language bloat over Your-Choice-Of-JS-Successor language or actually fixing the issues with JS"
ES5/ES5.1/ES6/ES7 ARE efforts to fix issues with JS and mostly driven by Mozilla.
Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control
#93I am writing to you about a very disturbing aspect of Firefox 38.0.5. Specifically, that the update experience appears to have been designed to throw away the choice your customers have made about the Internet experience they want, and replace it with the Internet experience Mozilla wants them to have. When we first saw the Firefox upgrade experience that strips users of their choice by effectively overriding existin…
It's sad how true this is.
I still fondly remeber the days of Firefox 2.5. IMO the best browser ever. It feels like Mozilla is trying to shove more shit down my throat with every update.
I'm by no means trying to defend Microsoft here. I installed Win10 yesterday, and they replaced my FF default with Microsoft Edge (which is arguably better than IE, but still not something I'd use voluntarily).
Why can't Mozilla ship their bloat as default-addons so I can at least easily remove all code associated with them. Revisiting about:config after every update gets really annoying. At this point the only thing mozilla has going for them is that all alternatives are worse.
Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control
#94I actually think Microsoft's change is better in regards to user choice. Either way, it still seems simple to me to change the default web browser in Windows 10. Here's a gif I made showing another way to change the default web browser to Firefox: http://i.imgur.com/FbdcfL3.gif (In the gif, both Cortana and Bing search is disabled, only standard Windows Search is used) Also, it's kind of embarrassing that Mozilla's o…
> Also, it's kind of embarrassing that Mozilla's official video for this shows an unactivated version of Windows 10.
All pre-release builds of Windows 10 have that watermark. Why is that embarrassing?
Edit: I stand corrected; there is an "Activate Windows" watermark distinct from the build identifier, which was added in the later preview builds. There was a window of time where new VMs couldn't be activated, since the Preview keys had been killed but the final release was not yet available. Looks like we recorded this on a fresh VM running a preview build, which can't be activated. Oh well.
Cite: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_win...
Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control
#95I am writing to you about a very disturbing aspect of Firefox 38.0.5. Specifically, that the update experience appears to have been designed to throw away the choice your customers have made about the Internet experience they want, and replace it with the Internet experience Mozilla wants them to have. When we first saw the Firefox upgrade experience that strips users of their choice by effectively overriding existin…
It's sad how true this is. I still fondly remeber the days of Firefox 2.5. IMO the best browser ever. It feels like Mozilla is trying to shove more shit down my throat with every update. I'm by no means trying to defend Microsoft here. I installed Win10 yesterday, and they replaced my FF default with Microsoft Edge (which is arguably better than IE, but still not something I'd use voluntarily). Why can't Mozilla ship…
Mozilla did agree, following the criticism on Pocket, that shipping new things like Pocket should be done as addons, and would do the work to fix that.
Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this is the most "pot calling the kettle black" article I've seen all month. Let's see: * no opt-out for Australis * removal of tabs on bottom * forced signed extensions * removing option to not retain download history (unless you give up browsing history too) * bundling of Hello * bundling of Pocket (requires a lot of effort to disable) * bundling of DRM web extensions * bundling ads out of the box (can be dis…
I think reasonable criticisms were made regarding some of those, like Pocket. However, Australis for example was a large redesign of the UI. I'm not sure how you can support an opt-out, as that would mean supporting two codebases - two different and separate UIs, at once. Regarding bundling of DRM, it isn't bundled, but it is downloaded on demand. This is a sad thing even so, but Google, Microsoft and Netflix just le…
Yep, this is what I think too. The Pocket and Hello case could at least have a disable option, even Google allows you to disable the new features that it brings in Chrome like Google Now and more recently the "Ok Google" hotword detection.
However, the Australis case is much more complicated. An UI is tons of code, if Mozilla opted too maintain two different codebases they would need to update both everytime they added a new feature. This would be a maintenance nightmare, to say at least. I think it's ok to have this feature as a separate extension, maintained by people that actually care about the older interface.
Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe you don't remember what a huge deal it was that Microsoft leveraged its desktop monopoly to gain market share for its internet browser. Bill Gates declaring that the browser is 'part of the OS' and can't be removed. The anti-trust trial in the US, the changes demanded by the EU... The "Default Programs" control has very few settings; very few settings that need to be imported, but somehow Microsoft ignored the…
That issue has been perverted over the years. Even though the punishment was providing other possible defaults, the initial problem wasn't really about the system default. It was that IE was ingrained in Windows as part of the system. That prevented other browser from competing on an even playing field.
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Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> IMO, the choice of IndexedDB over WebSQL set the Web back 20 years. Yep. I recognise that this may not have been a winnable fight, but I absolutely judge the people who were on the other side. WebSQL was a much better tech than IndexedDB. Was the dependence on Sqlite problematic? Sure. But Mozilla had the resources to make a pretty good try at fixing it; instead they refused to even implement it and gave us the rel…
How would you fix WebSQL? Writing a from-scratch implementation of SQLite seems like the only option, and I don't think Mozilla had the resources for that at the time. I agree the situation sucks, but I'm not sure how to fix it even today.
Like I said, I'm not sure this was a winnable fight. And yes, writing a good DB implementation from scratch is really, really hard. But...
First, keep in mind that lot of this decision was political; if Mozilla had lobbied for it a lot of fudging could have been done. Instead Mozilla made sure that a strict reading of the rules was used by which, yes, WebSQL clearly failed.
And no, Mozilla probably didn't have the resources to implement SQLite from scratch, but:
1. They could have worked with others. Apple, quite clearly, was much more invested in WebSQL than IndexedDB. Could they have contributed to a join effort? We'll never know.
2. In particular, the rule about needing two seperate implementations is good, but it could have been fudged here; a bigger problem was the lack of a spec beyond "whatever Sqlite does". Did Mozilla have the resources to clearly specify how a reference implementation should work, even if the only actual implementation remained Sqlite? Maybe. Would that have been enough? Arguably.
3. In the event, IndexedDB was not a real replacement for WebSQL; at most it was an important tool that could be used to build one, some day; a process that is still ongoing (eg, with PouchDB) and has no real end in site. Even if we lacked the resources to really bring WebSQL up to par and re-implement Sqlite from scratch, we apparently lack the resources to bring IndexedDB up to par too. If we're doomed to spend years struggling with broken implementations and poor browser support either way, what did we gain with IndexedDB?
Like I said, I don't know that there was a good solution to this. But I feel like Mozilla helped ensure we got a bad one.
Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control
#99I am writing to you about a very disturbing aspect of Firefox 38.0.5. Specifically, that the update experience appears to have been designed to throw away the choice your customers have made about the Internet experience they want, and replace it with the Internet experience Mozilla wants them to have. When we first saw the Firefox upgrade experience that strips users of their choice by effectively overriding existin…
Your sarcasm is entertaining, but the big difference is that while neither company/product is perfect, Microsoft still essentially owns the desktop with Windows. While Mozilla's Firefox is just one among several choices of web browser, currently #3 in the rankings. It is extremely easy to switch web browser. It is not easy to switch OS. On a Windows machine, if you are savvy enough, you can install Linux, but otherwi…
>Microsoft still essentially owns the desktop with Windows
So what? That doesn't mean they are obliged to comply with whatever you think is "the right thing"®.
I'm gonna highlight another another big difference that you seemed to overlook.
Microsoft is a company, their mission is to generate profits for their shareholders and they are the owners of Windows 10, because they developed it. Mozilla is a non-profit corporation whose main product, Firefox, is software that has been developed and tested (to a big extent) by people who do not get paid a single cent, because they have faith in the project and the overall mission that Mozilla attempts to portrait.
Now, I really want to understand your side, please explain, how come what Microsoft did with Windows was wrong but what Mozilla did with Firefox was ok?
Edit: Downvotes, but no arguments, as expected.
Re: Open Letter to Microsoft’s CEO: Don’t Roll Back the Clock on Choice and Control
#100I am writing to you about a very disturbing aspect of Firefox 38.0.5. Specifically, that the update experience appears to have been designed to throw away the choice your customers have made about the Internet experience they want, and replace it with the Internet experience Mozilla wants them to have. When we first saw the Firefox upgrade experience that strips users of their choice by effectively overriding existin…
pot meet kettle