Aside from reflexive ass-covering, which is to be expected; Yahoo(and any of their ilk in the advertisement slinging business) have a fairly obvious incentive to deny the seriousness of the problem.

Ad networks are a ghastly open sewer of shoddily vetted and frequently dangerous crap; usually served agonizingly slowly and heavy on Flash and scripts and crap. Even better, ads offer a nice way to hit a broad selection of users, across sites, and without needing to compromise specific operators or lure people into the seedy side of the internet where people stereotypically go to get unpleasant viruses.

Even if you are one of the 'But advertising experiences enable the content economy, ad-blockers are immoral and killing businesses, etc.' people, what do you say about the sheer danger? Leaving ads unblocked is about as safe as letting sewage into your drinking water distribution system. That's a problem. Fix your ghastly excuse for a platform, so I could at least let my guard down without getting cyber-syphilis, and then maybe we can have a chat about whether ads are wonderful or not. Until that time, don't even bother.

Denial arguably creates a problematic perverse incentive because it provides a DoS-like extra 'for free' if you can manage to make the target act enough like it has been botted.

For people who aren't exactly up to the task of running their own IDS, though, information would certainly be helpful. There probably are people who don't care about running a festering worm farm; but there are definitely people who don't know that they are doing so.

No, if it's not cheaper and better than the competition, then there needs to be no competition: it needs to fill an unmet need.

This product does not fill a significant unmet need, so it needs to be cheaper and better than the competition, which does already fill this need. Remember, there's lots of meal replacements out there.

Yes, there are a small handful of people who want this product. It's clearly not enough to make a profit on volume, because they're raising their prices.

That's too bad, because that's the only thing that would help us, the slashdotting public. And, you know, the general public, as well.

More than being awkward for them, it's useful for us if you inform us. I care more about moving forward than looking back, but a glance at your notes now and again can be useful. Forgive, yes. Forget, no.

I haven't seen you go over it. I haven't seen a compelling argument for FirefoxOS at all.

What he said is that he didn't personally care about it, that he understands that some people have use cases where it makes sense... and that he understands that the developers are a bit of a problem. Not that he liked it... or doesn't like it. It's unlikely to have affected him substantially yet, except for rejecting bad patches

Now, now, that's not true at all! The rich don't usually do their own dirty work. They drive other people into poverty, and then have them do it in order to try to survive. That way, they can keep the blood off of their own suit.

Fixing it or not fixing it has no effect on its value as a piece of artwork, or as a cultural icon. If it doesn't get a new head, that is a statement of a sort. If it does get a new head, it's a different statement, but it's no more or less valid. It's just what happened.

There's no particular reason to follow or not follow the wishes of the creators, either. They put it out in the world and left it to its own devices. It belongs to all of us now.

I say fix it, slap it on the ass, and send it on its way

Try as you might you will never make 99.44% of the Earth's population give one tenth of one fuck about something someone left on the side of the road, when they have important things to worry about.

If you can't explain why, and someone to whom you're trying to promote the OS has to go watch a video and actually download and trial the OS you're talking about, it's probable that none of the features are actually that compelling. If they were, you would remember what they were and you could tell us about them, or at least name them.

Don't be lazy. Tell us why we should care, or stop expecting us to.

That is FUD bullshit. What does FirefoxOS give me over a real Linux distribution running Firefox?

Why? Why would I care? Why would I want FirefoxOS over a less-fucked over version of Linux running Firefox? What makes it so important? I'll let you know, and the answer is nothing. There's nothing compelling about FirefoxOS. It forgets that the whole reason that ChromeOS even exists today is that Android still isn't good enough to host full desktop Chrome. When Android Chrome reaches parity with desktop Chrome, ChromeOS is going away. And then Firefox will have doubly no reason to exist.

The problem with Mozilla is that when they put more "resources" into "improving desktop Firefox" they shit it up and make us hate it. What they really need to do is fire a few people, cut back on their mission creep problem, and focus on keeping Firefox current and not fucking it up.

I don't get scared when I read that stuff. I just say, "Oh, that explains Adobe" or whatever. The truth is that the world is a fractally more fucked up place than you think it is. Most people are doing it wrong and proud, regardless of their job. Or, they're phoning it in, and they know it. But since our world is not even close to being a meritocracy, we're going to have more of that.

How unusual! Were they simply called "Nameless, Inc."?

Guess that's when you learned to surrender, huh? You left out the interesting part of the story as a result.

Right, now they're a different kind of evil. We, however, are the same old boring capitalist evil we've always been.