Comment Re:Horizontal fit? (Score 1) 70
This is a feature we want to add, but we haven't got it yet. Until then, you can try the Bigger Text add-on, which adds simple font size controls instead.
> Personally, I think that's all a bit tinfoil-hat, but it's always possible.
Everything is possible. This is why intelligent people, when speculating, talk about what is very probable.
Note: I am on the Mobile Firefox development team.
Load time is definitely an issue on Maemo. The built-in MicroB browser uses "faststart" which means that it starts a process when the device starts up, and that process stays in memory even after you close the browser. Firefox 1.1 doesn't use faststart, but we and Nokia are working on it for version 2 which will be the default MeeGo browser.
The "fennec" process running after you close the window is a bug, and one that I don't think we've seen before. If you'd like to help us solve it, you can report it here or to bugzilla.mozilla.org. Thanks!
Note: I am on the FIrefox Mobile development team.
MeeGo for Handsets is actually based heavily on Maemo. From our point of view at least, it's an incremental change rather than a complete replacement. Firefox for MeeGo will be an evolution of Firefox for Maemo. Of course, it helps that the bulk of Firefox code is already platform- and toolkit-agnostic - for example, we already have Qt builds for Maemo 5.
Based on their merits?
The Windows API is so broad, so deep, and so functional that most ISVs would be crazy not to use it. And it is so deeply embedded in the source code of many Windows apps that there is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system instead...
It is this switching cost that has given the customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO, our lack of a sexy vision at times, and many other difficulties [...] Customers constantly evaluate other desktop platforms, [but] it would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move.
In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago.
--Internal Microsoft memo drafted for Bill Gates, Feb 21, 1997
In 2002, Be Inc. sued [4] Microsoft claiming that Hitachi had been dissuaded from selling PCs loaded with BeOS, and that Compaq had been pressured to not market an Internet appliance in partnership with Be. BeOS also claimed that Microsoft acted to artificially depress Be Inc's IPO. The case was eventually settled out of court[5] with no admission of liability on Microsoft's part.
I frequently think of the behaviors I see in terms of human behavior and human emotional responses even though I know that they are wrong. The motivation and perception of a pig is incredibly different from that of a human, even a child at a similar level of intellectual development. The perfect person to readup on to learn about how fundamentally damaging the "anthropomorphic" view is to our understanding of animals is Temple Grandin.
From what I have read, Temple Grandin does not support your arguments. From her essay Animals Are Not Things: A View on Animal Welfare Based on Neurological Complexity:
Science has shown that animals such as mammals and birds feel pain in a manner similar to humans. Insects, viruses and microbes are not able to feel pain or suffer. More research is needed to determine the extent that fishes and amphibians feel pain. Present research shows that they do experience fear. Fear is very aversive and animals should be shielded form situations that cause great fear. Fear will cause a great rise in stress hormones.
[...]
When the structure of the brain and nervous system is studied, there is no black and white line between people and higher mammals such as chimps, dogs or cows.
[...]
As nervous system and brain complexity increases the welfare needs of the animal increase and become more complex, but all animals that have sufficient nervous systems complexity to suffer from either pain or fear need basic welfare protections. Animals with complex brains also have greater social needs and a need for greater environmental enrichment.
[...]
It is obvious to me that intelligent animals such as elephants experience emotions that are more complex than simple pain or fear. They will need different legal protections than animals with simpler nervous systems. The degree of protection, and environmental and social enrichment an animal will require will be dependent on the level of complexity of its nervous system.
Her opinions do not support your assertion that "the motivation and perception of a pig is incredibly different from that of a human," or that animals do not resemble human behavior or emotional responses.
The thing is, most people with a Nokia phone never install a 3rd-party app.
It's real Java. You can use most existing Java libraries. What's different is:
* It uses its own bytecode and its own virtual machine instead of the JVM.
* It uses its own GUI libraries rather than AWT or Swing.
So, you basically need to write your UI from scratch - but otherwise you can reuse any existing Java libraries and source code.
Want proof? Ctrl+U.
Whoa, don't blow my mind quite so hard. I'm not sure I can handle all this wisdom at the same time.
C'mon, you think I execute shell commands by writing a C program that calls fork(), exec(), and pipe()? You think I write web pages pixel by pixel? Obviously high-level languages and programming paradigms are appropriate in many cases.
I'm sticking it to the Java weenies who think that C and C++ are obsolete. The people who year after year say that *now* Java is "often as fast as C++ and sometimes faster." The people who still won't acknowledge that there is a real reason C and C++ are still the languages of OS kernels.
It's not premature optimization to write libavcodec in C. Likewise with OS kernels, virtual machines, rendering engines, DSP plugins, and many other applications where the code will almost certainly be on the critical path of a resource-intensive application. It's not premature optimization to use manual memory management in applications that need to move lots of data around with low latency.
Chrome got me where it matters most - raw speed.
This is why I never understand how people can say "sure, maybe Java/garbage-collection/50mb-binaries/etc. are a little slower, but computers are SO FAST these days and programmer productivity is SO much more important. Hardware is cheap, programmers are expensive." etc.
Speed still matters! And it always will.
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.
