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Comment Re:Should be "gold pressed latinum" (Score 1) 265

So money would be a bit pointless

Not everything is universally available in the Star Trek universe. For me, an unsolved problem with the Federation economy is real estate. Why does Picard's brother live in a manor house in a vineyard? Why not someone else? Why not me? I want to live in a vineyard.

It wouldn't matter how many planets there were in the Federation. There would always be more people than planets, there would always be planets which are more desirable than others and there would always be particular places on those planets more desirable than other places. Who gets to live where? Who gets to own land to run a vineyard, instead of there being apartment blocks or suburban housing in the same place? It's never addressed beyond a vague sense of it not being a problem.

I think the Ferengi economy is actually the curiosity in this setting ; it seems to depend on artificial scarcity (and repression of entire social groups, from the way they treat their women).

I don't think it's a curiosity, it's deliberate. Narratively, the Ferengi business and economy is a deeply engrained part of their culture. Metaphorically, the Ferengi are us in the present day. They don't do business because they have to, they do business because they want to. Money is how they keep score. It's how we keep score.

Comment Re:Memory Leaks Solved? (Score 1) 152

Yes, I have had a currently open bug with FF21.0--that got worse with 22.0.

Where's the bug? Link to it.

And I and the other watchers of the bug I opened at Mozilla will dispute your contention that Chrome uses more memory. Simply not true!

Did you not look at the memory usage charts from Tom's Hardware? Chrome uses more memory than other browsers. This has been my consistent experience as well as Tom's Hardware's as well as most everyone's. Look at another memory usage chart from Tom's. They use Chrome's memory usage tool to measure it. Even Google disagrees with you.

Comment Re:Memory Leaks Solved? (Score 3, Insightful) 152

I won't be downloading any new versions of Firefox--nor will I enable automatic updates--until they fix the danged memory leaks that have been present since they began their whirlwind upgrade cycle with FF 4.0.

What memory leaks? If you've found new ones, have you reported them? Significant progress has been made in Firefox's memory usage in the last three years. Do you read the memshrink progress reports? If you don't, maybe you should.

Chrome is a handy replacement for what used to be a reliable friend--Firefox.

Surely you realise that Chrome uses more memory than Firefox. Look at a comparison of browser memory usage with a single tab open and multiple tabs open. If you're happy with Chrome's memory usage, you'll be happy with any browser's memory usage.

Comment Advantage Over VP9? (Score 1) 104

VP9 produces video about the same size and quality as H.265 (Google I/O talk on VP9, though they of course weren't using x265 to compare), VP9 support is already in Chrome (with Firefox and Opera likely to follow soon) and the reference VP9 implementation is BSD-licensed. What's the advantage of H.265 over VP9 and what does x265 in particular offer over this new version of WebM (VP9+Opus)?

Submission + - ORBX.js: JavaScript-Based, Low Latency HD Video Codec (gigaom.com)

theweatherelectric writes: Mozilla and OTOY have announced a new video codec with a JavaScript-based decoder capable of delivering 1080p60 video with 25% better compression than H.264. Amanda Alvarez from Gigaom writes, 'Mozilla has teamed up with Hollywood rendering company OTOY to create a new codec to stream video and apps from the cloud directly to the browser. The JavaScript library ORBX can render apps, gaming platforms or an entire operating system in any HTML5-capable browser, including Chrome, Safari or Firefox, even on a mobile device. The announcement is another attempt at destabilizing the hegemony of the H.264 video-compression standard, famously advanced by Apple over Flash and present in all iOS devices, after the promotion of WebM by Matroska and Google. The impacts of the purely JavaScript-based system are multiple: for end users, the ability to run native PC apps on any device with an internet connection and to purchase and protect content without digital-rights management (DRM); for content creators, cheaper, faster rendering and the ability to distribute anywhere viewers can type in a URL; and for open web or cloud-computing advocates, a push away from proprietary or legacy plug-ins and an embrace of HTML5.' Mozilla's CTO Brendon Eich has some further discussion of ORBX.js on his blog.

Submission + - Epic Games Releases HTML5 Epic Citadel Demo (unrealengine.com)

theweatherelectric writes: Epic Games has made the HTML5 Epic Citadel demo available for testing with Firefox 23 Nightly. Epic Games writes in their press release, 'Epic Games and Mozilla have continued a close collaboration first revealed during last month’s Game Developers Conference to release “Epic Citadel” on the Web running in HTML5. No plug-ins or added components are needed to experience the free app. “Epic Citadel” is built using standards-based technologies like HTML5, WebGL and JavaScript, and should work in any standards-based browser implementing those features. For optimal performance, Epic recommends loading “Epic Citadel” at http://www.unrealengine.com/html5 using Firefox Nightly version 23 or above, which includes optimizations for asm.js, a highly-optimizable subset of JavaScript pioneered by Mozilla, whose performance can rival native code.' Mozilla's Vladimir Vukicevic has posted some further details and presentation slides about the HTML5 port of Unreal Engine 3 on his blog and Epic Games has published an Epic Citadel HTML5 FAQ.

Comment Re:Answered in reverse order (Score 1) 464

The "killer feature" for me on Gmail is conversation view, where it groups messages together in conversations, so instead of a ton of disparate emails, they're grouped together in a single line and can be seen in sequential order. Back when I switched over to Gmail, it was the only thing that had this feature, and now I find it indispensable, though it does sometimes screw up (since email was never designed to actually have this in the first place). Do other clients have this yet?

Yes: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gmail-conversation-view/. My experience has been that webmail is inferior to having a mail client. Even simple things like correctly displaying email which contains styled HTML content doesn't work in, for example, Gmail.

Firefox

Submission + - WebRTC Makes Firefox's Social API Even More Social (mozilla.org)

theweatherelectric writes: Mozilla has put together a demo which combines WebRTC with Firefox's Social API. Over on Mozilla's Future Releases blog, Maire Reavy writes, 'WebRTC is a powerful new tool that enables web app developers to include real-time video calling and data sharing capabilities in their products. While many of us are excited about WebRTC because it will enable several cool gaming applications and improve the performance and availability of video conferencing apps, WebRTC is proving to be a great tool for social apps. Sometimes when you’re chatting with a friend, you just want to click on their name and see and talk with them in real-time. Imagine being able to do that without any glitches or hassles, and then while talking with them, easily share almost anything on your computer or device: vacation photos, memorable videos – or even just a link to a news story you thought they might be interested in – simply by dragging the item into your video chat window.'

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