Personally, I'm not THAT thrilled; I'm more interested in AR than VR. As for the imporvement: it would've happened, sooner or later. Technology marches on, etc, etc.

Oh, and I loathe facebook. DK lost any appeal to me when they sold out.

That. And people also moaned about the chrome-ness and especially the lack of add-on bar since I can recall. What did that feedback accomplish? Exactly nothing. Australis got pushed through anyway, because UI uniformity with the 5" smartphones is the highest priority for a desktop browser everyone uses on 24" displays.

So what should have the users done? Everyone forks Firefox and makes their own variant without the stupid changes?

Entitlement, what? If they were doing out of altruism - THEN I could understand your point. That is not the case, however. Mozilla employees are paid (largely by Google, iirc) and it's literally just another job. It only stands to reason that if they are not doing a good job, they get criticized. I doubt they care too much anyway. It's not like they get fired over something as trivial as user feedback... unlike some of us.

And seriously, if pointing out flaws in a new design is "ruining the effort" then simply plug your ears and go back to your la-la land where everything is always peachy and your moz-dev gods are infallible.

You do know those addon "fixes" are temporary at best and utterly dependant on whatever changes the FF devs feel like doing, right? If the mod gets broken then everyone is welcome to the chrome-copy UI. But that's no problem, right? We all love Chrome, don't we?

Downgrading is a seriously bad idea - security patches are a must for browsers. ESR can save you for a while, but it's really just a time-delaying tactic. The v24 ESR for Firefox runs out of support just now, meaning even ESR users will get to "enjoy" Australis soon enough. As for the shelf life of the addon, that's really dependant on what the FF devs do; they are free to do changes that borks the mod. If they do something that makes the mod unable to recreate the addon bar, then there it is! No more addon bar for you. And THAT is what worries me, not the mod-dev calling it quits.

But whatever floats your boat! Me, I'd prefer a browser that doesn't need patching just because some manager decided to (intentionally) gimp it. So for now, Pale Moon it is... will see what the future brings.

That's a very good solution... right until the plugin stops working because a future update broke it. Then you are left with a chrome-copycat.

There is. It's called ADI (Attitude Director Indicator) - basically an artificial horizon. It should be basic for every pilot to rely on it instead of their own senses, but there were quite a few crashes due to them failing to do so.

If you have a power failure so complete you lost every instrument, windows won't do you any good. Do you think the fly-by-wire and the hydraulics operate on magical pixie dust?

You're right, most of those are not visible at first glance. Mostly because most them are things that were already there (I still use Firebug for development, for example) or because the changes are minimal (FF is right now using 2.2GB memory with 4 tabs open, I never noted any real increase in responsibility and FF still has a perchance to just randomly crash out, networking plain DOES NOT WORK if you use a proxy that overrides SSL certs etc etc).

I get that - but I still don't get the reasons behind your comparison. ;)

That's kind of a very dubious claim - and one that rests more on personal bias than anything proveable... I see the US in much less of a rosy light, given how they, you know, installed Saddam there in the first place. And then supplied him with WMDs so he could kill the very rebels the US proclaimed to now side with.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I'm sure that trying to help is going to be a real comfort to all those who died - or have to live in constant fear thanks to their country descending into civil war.
In short: given the absolute mess that Iraq became, I wouldn't care about the intentions of the US - even if I really believed they were doubtlessly altruistic to begin with...

Land theft is kind of a misnomer. There are very important navy bases in Crimea - ones which the Russian navy kept using after the USSR dissolved... and which they must've felt in danger after their puppet government got kicked out of Ukraine. Not that I approve of this move - had enough of Russia sitting around here for fifty years - just saying it's a whee bit more nuanced than you make it seem like.

As for reactions and fears... the world is only up in arms because we are reminded of the Cold War. If China decided to annex parts of Mongolia, I could tell you what would happen: a big, fat nothing. Ukraine is too close, and the bad memories with Russia are too recent. But this was really to be expected; after the NATO continously expanding east and losing Serbia, Iraq and now Ukraine... of course Russia would react in some way.

But Russia already controlled the overwhelming majority of the gas/oil. Most if that stuff going through Crimea/Ukraine is doing that - going through. They aren't produced locally; they ususally arrive from Russia and just get transported further west. I know because there were yearly disputes between Russia and Ukraine about the prices, and the continous Russian threats to stop the pumps made every damn country here build ludicrous amounts of reserves...
If Russia wanted to threaten W-EU with closing the tap, nothing stopped them from doing so already. I really think it was just their fear of losing the comfortable bases in Crimea that made them act; though I wouldn't be surprised if they now annexed more territory - to secure a land route there.

And I still don't get why is Crimea worse - the US would have happily made a puppet-state out of Iraq were it not for the civil war their continously naive (and short-sighted) decisions made. Sure, they wouldn't have annexed Iraq in name; but they would have still ran the show. Why - how - is that better?

Yeah, because anyone can sneakily launch something into orbit without the whole world watching! There are certainly no radar systems that are capable - and even purposefully designed - of tracking any larger missile being launched.

Oh wate...

You didn't find a few hundred thousands getting killed objectionable - while one (reportedly anyway) guy getting killed you did?

I'm sorry, but... what?

Small-time admins maybe. If one works as part of a larger team, automation and documentation is king - any such backdoors would get anyone into trouble, quick.

Just write them onto tape, and wait a few years until GPUs are even better at cracking or a bug has been found in TrueCrypt (remember, the first audit is only starting now).