Auto-updated me to v8, browser started completely freezing and crashing after 60 seconds. Worthless... as much as I love FF and everything it stands for, I don't need a buggy POS that rolls out another poorly QA'd product every two weeks. Switched to chrome and sadly happy with the decision.

-rt

While not directly related to Firefox, I submitted a bug for Thunderbird's import mechanism about 6-12 months post launch. Every year or so I get someone else posting to this still outstanding issue...

Bug fixes/support, the achilles heal of FOSS. Where are these folks who want to maintain existing software? Paging all autistic OCD programmers!

-rt

The problem is that the need for code reviews is driven by lax, sloppy developers who don't see regression testing as a requirement, and who foist crappy, untested code that, in many cases, they haven't even tested.

As a consulting exec (experience side) who oversees software delivery I can't even begin to express the stunning crap that I see developers submit for "qa/review". Crap that doesn't even WORK correctly in the first place is submitted for testing, with the QA feedback often "Does not work". Aside from the hours of UE and QA resources this burns with useless testing, it highlights what I think is both an increasing lack of accountability and a lack of professionalism within the development community in general.

What's driving this I have no idea... less formal CS training? Looser languages? Web-centric apps? Lower end standards? Higher demand = more crappy resources? Whatever it is I'm seeing it everywhere, and it's driving me nuts. The lack of an appreciate for regression testing is absolutely insane... code reviews are just symptomatic of a larger problem, which is a lack of quality and skill.

-rt

Saw this one coming a mile off. The iPod wasn't nearly the best player on the market, and yet it dominated everyone from iRiver to the Rio Karma by an absurd margin. Marketing + digital lifestyle = profit. How much of an idiot do you have to be not to see this one coming...

The only thing Android can fight for at this point is the product halo, but unfortunately between Apple TV, NFC iMacs, iPhone, and iPad (all of which speak together fairly easily) Apple's already ahead of the game for the living room. The big battle will be the content creators and providers, who aren't nearly as disorganized as the music industry.

-rt

About a paywall that prevents them from being a free-loading blog site?

Huffington Post, yet another vacuus shell that produces no value, delivers no real content, and can't survive as a pay business. How much did AOL pay again?

-rt

Seriously, maybe Slashdot should change it's title to "News from yesterday, stuff that might still matter".

I realize Slashdot isn't a news site, but seeing news or stories about things that happened days or weeks ago is a little ridiculous.

-rt

Because, you know, the modern web is about 13 years old, and the pace of evolution is INCREASING.

In 5 years we'll have batteries that cost 10% of the price with components that draw 5% of the power and work off environmental factors (super efficient solar panels). You're post sounds like it was made by the guys at Nokia making 1999 phones in a 2010 world. Stand still and die.

I for one am happy someone FINALLY bashed Nokia over the head. Maybe now they at least have a chance to survive, at least a better one than the buckethead bracket of Dell and HP.

-rt

Why does it take so long for someone to finally challenge crap like this? Every time someone asks me for this kind of information at the register it just makes me mad... with so many other ways to validate my identity there is zero excuse for exposing this kind of data to retailers.

Here's to hoping this cascades to other states... who am I kidding, somewhere a lobbyist is talking with a CA state senator about when and how quickly they can amend the law.

-rt

I find your comments about the previous poster being daft kind of funny. You're post posits that there is no profit motive for Apple to "lock down the internet"?

Your description paints a picture where it's about the internet... it isn't. It's about access to information, data, and media. Apple's "profit motive" is to slowly pull the different pieces of your day to day experience into a DRM, protected, entitled world that requires you purchase one of their devices to access said information.

This is ALREADY happening, as people who've bought iPods and iPhones and purchased content are forced to buy MORE Apple devices as they upgrade and evolve. Essentially it's the same thing we saw for years with MS, but on a much larger scale sine it's now beginning to consume every type of media you use (music, movies, etc.).

Sure, you can argue that "some stuff" can be moved to another platform, but if the level of technical knowledge required to do it is prohibitive no one will. In the end you arrive at a place where there is no "free" access to the internet as you know it... everything is locked down inside "subscriptions" and entitled accounts, all empowered and enabled by Apple who makes money:

1) Selling hardware to do it
2) Taking 30% off the top

The scariest part is that it's just like an addiction/drug model... before you know it you can't stop taking it without extreme pain/withdrawal, and the downsides appear to outweigh the upsides. Momentum is a bitch.

Not seeing this and not seeing the frightening power of a walled garden is "daft" to say the least. It's the reason EVERY major media company is pursuing a path that involves some form of walled garden.

rt

Paying lawyers or paying government officials off? Is there some kind of a formula for this? How do quantify gov't graft and whim?

-rt

I design sophistcated financial applications for a living, so I know exactly how valuable basic trend indication can be. The point of my post was to highlight that this idea is:

a) not at all novel or original
b) like trying to patent writing
c) did not in any way originate with Tufte

Great idea, not Tufte's, in no way Microsofts, laughable on it's face.

-rt

Microsoft for trying to patent anything related to this or Tufte for putting a name on and claiming to "create" something as laughably simple as a miniature graph line...

Bad Tufte! Baaaaaad *hits with paper* Now, if I can just patent that really small pie chart idea I've been playing with.

-rt

I think I know where I'm having dinner tonight! :)

-A Committed Environmentalist

That you must be in the advertising department.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence my friend. Apple is secure for the same reason there's a "selective application universe" for the mac; when virus writer's do the cost benefit it makes a lot more sense to go after 90% of the market.

-rt

Access to the often overlooked and underappreciated "Make Dude" command. And on the lord created The Dude, and it was good.

http://www.wildfiregames.com/0ad/album_image.php?pic_id=10984

-rt