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Slashback: Galeon, Forgent, Platformation 175

Posted by timothy from the it-is-not-yet-september-6th dept.
Slashback's blizzard of updates, corrections and amplifications includes some more information about Win2K and HIPAA, another notch on the Browser Progress Chart, Dreamcast ethernet jacks, the Hoopla'd Red Hat Menace and more. Read on.

Who said what now? bratgrrl writes "eWeek's "Red Hat: Next Redmond?"article was quietly and without comment altered- they deleted the crucial "Red Hat backlash" quote from the original article. No retraction, no explanation, just an Orwellian revision. Thank goodness for Google, which cached the original article.

I suspect the original quote never happened."

Because not everyone needs Chatzilla. Mozilla gets a lot of attention around here -- after all, it is the giant lizard of the open source browser world. But to the question "What about Galeon?", Nachtjäger writes: "The answer: LOTS is happening to Galeon. Given the length of time since the last release, we decided to write up an update on how things are going on Galeon2. Check it out here"

I hope certain aspects of Galeon (tab-name shortening and color coding, for two) are soon rolled back into Mozilla.

OK, now you can have it. Esekla writes "Slashdot did an article about the announcement of Kylix 3 (the first Kylix to support C++ code), but at the time it was not actually available for download. Now both Open and Enterprise Trial editions finally can be downloaded."

Now you can assemble your yard-sale cluster. Speaking of things now really available, BJH writes: "The site featured in last week's Dreamcast BBA story is now accepting orders! The good news is, they're only $US80 each. The bad news is, they're not accepting orders from outside Japan ;) (If there's enough interest, perhaps someone could be convinced to do a bulk buy and ship to people overseas...)"

Anyone who offers something interesting enough in trade can have my Dreamcast for mucking about ;)

When you trace things back far enough ... Dennis writes: "Although Chris has a valid point about the catch 22 between Win2K, SP3 and HIPAA, his example is not accurate because medical records that are related to students are protected by FERPA regulations and not by HIPAA. Here's a reference link with more info."

The fat ladies are still warming up. john82 writes "With all the hoopla still swirling about MP3s, there is fresh information in the JPEG saga. Dateline Berlin: Algovision-Luratech GmbH says that Forgent's patent claim (4,698,672) is all wet. Technical experts have laid out the technical and legal arguments against the claim. And they intend to air the dirty laundry at a meeting Sept 4. The announcement by Forgent earlier this year caused quite a stir here. Wonder if Sony can get their money back?"

Of especial interest to iBook owners. Earlier this month, Slashdot posted the news that rather than wiping your Mac's OS to put on a GNU/Linux system, you could order Yellow Dog Linux preinstalled on Apple hardware. Ray Sanders of Qli Tech Linux Computers writes: "We also are selling Apple Systems with Linux installed, however, Terrasoft is only installing Yellow Dog Linux, we offer Gentoo PPC, Debian PPC, Mandrake PPC, and SuSE PPC. We also have full working sound and video on the iBook and Powerbook with XFree86, whereas YDL Does not yet support the mobile Radeon chipset found on those two units."

Competition is good.
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Slashback: Galeon, Forgent, Platformation More

Slashback: Galeon, Forgent, Platformation

Comments Filter:

  • About Red Hat... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cubeman ( 530448 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @07:07PM (#4167384)
    I think this has interesting implications for the future. I certainly don't like the idea of Internet news sites silently changing pages, but the problem is that there is no definite way (besides Google and the like) to know if a page has been changed. It was sneaky enough when we found out that CNN does it, but at least they update the timestamp. Everything regarding modification date is controlled on the server that returns the page. What I'd like to see, if it doesn't exist already, is a system for clients to verify that a page has not been changed. Perhaps something like a MD5 hash of each webpage you visit being stored on your computer, and a warning displayed if it doesn't match upon future views. Of course this would cause massive false alarms on dynamic sites, but perhaps there could be introduced a standard for putting tags around the actual article on news sites, so they would know what else to filter out?

    Otherwise, I can see these sort of changes becoming more and more prevalent, until eventually the fear of political-correctness and not insulting anyone completely drives us to immediately change anything considered "offensive" and deny it ever existed. Then, we will have 1984.

    "Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me. There lie they, and here lie we, under the spreading chestnut tree."
    • Of course this would cause massive false alarms on dynamic sites, but perhaps there could be introduced a standard for putting tags around the actual article on news sites, so they would know what else to filter out?

      <NO-TAMPER-TAG>The</NO-TAMPER-TAG> great thing about having Microsoft buy out Red Hat is that at last Linux users will be able to use Windows Update from Galeon...
      • exactly! It is not in their best interest to do that, because then they are implicitly allowing a way to get just the static bits, eg one could ignore the advertising. It also makes libel cases against them hard to prosecute: (oh yeah, *prove* that we wrote/published that...)
    • I think it's inevitable that news stories will change over time. Of course, it would be nice if there was a note about it, but as long as it's a correction I don't see anything wrong with it.

      • Re:About Red Hat... (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Cubeman ( 530448 )
        Where do you draw the line between a correction and altering truth? Is it okay to correct a mistyped date? How about a "mistyped" quote? There's really no good way to determine what is a correction and when you are covering up something.

        • Re:About Red Hat... (Score:2, Informative)

          by C0deM0nkey ( 203681 )
          In general, I agree with you. That having been said...

          In today's competitive online market, news publishers are pushing their journalists to get the "scoop" on everyone else. The publication that publishes first will get the advertising dollars that go with it as word spreads of some breaking news and the masses head over to the site to check out the story. As a result, mistakes, misquotes and other misunderstandings are going to happen...not unlike how things work(ed) on the "press wire" (or did work in the "good ol' days" :) ). In fact, it is probably not far from the truth to say that the online publishers of today view themselves as the "wired" publishers of yesteryear. "Get the story NOW! Sort out the details later."

          Unlike print publishers who can publish a retraction or updated story and be reasonably certain that readers will see the correction in the next issue, online publishers do not have the luxury of "issues". The boundaries between "issues" are nebulous in the online world. An online publisher can publish a retraction, update a timestamp, whatever and people who have read the article will likely never know a retraction or correction has occurred -- they aren't "flipping" through the pages.

          Don't ascribe to conspiracy theory, censorship or crimes against humanity that which can most easily be ascribed to greed and advertising. :)

          Rob

    • . . .perhaps there could be introduced a standard for putting tags around the actual article on news sites, so they would know what else to filter out?

      Not to be overly simplistic, but the bottom line is that there can't (and shouldn't) be a technological subsitute for good, old fashioned critical thinking skills. Deciding what to filter in and what to filter out, what is bogus and what isn't, whether you should take information with a grain of salt, and how big that grain of salt should be is ultimately up to the reader, and no amount of tagging and markup will change this.

    • Perhaps something like a MD5 hash of each webpage you visit being stored on your computer, and a warning displayed if it doesn't match upon future views. Of course this would cause massive false alarms on dynamic sites, but perhaps there could be introduced a standard for putting tags around the actual article on news sites, so they would know what else to filter out?

      This will never happen, since it implies that there is structure which denotes what the actual content of the page is. Given such structure, one can simply filter out all the rest of the page (including ads, etc).

      Remember, it's only because of the nice, transparent structure of HTML web pages that we're able to do things like block images. You can't do that sort of thing with evil things like Flash.

      Power mongers hate structured content, because it lessens their control over their content.

  • When it first appeared, that article was lacking some blood flow to the vascular muscle in the spongy area. Now it appears to be positively freeze dried.
  • Is it possible to put Linux on a PowerBook G4 and still be able to boot into OS X/9.2? I have said lovely computer and have been looking into possibly putting Linux (Any Flava better than the rest?) on it, but I'm not sure of the best way to do this. Plus I still need OS X/9.2, so I would need to get back to them. Any helpful advice?
    • Bloodmoon, Yes all of our Apple Linux Systems dual boot OSX/Linux by default. If memory serves correctly, YDL also does Dual Boot by default.

      I'd strongly suggest Gentoo Linux 1.4 when it hits the street in early-mid sept.

      Altivec Support is a good thing

    • Absolutely.

      All "New World" Macs use Open Firmware for booting and you can have as many OS partitions as you like, with or without any of the MacOSes. Linux does need to reside on a different partition from MacOS X, though, as some of the directory structures clash.

    • i'm running dual (truple?) OS X, OS 9, yellowdog 2.0. install mac side first, then linux. the yaboot/ybin program is very much lilo, only difference is you'll go through a two-stage boot process for linux.

      it's kind of a funambulist walk at times--for example, the imovie 2 install actually wiped all non-hfs partitions until it was fixed. but those are the same issues you'll face on any multiboot system.

      i've only tried yellowdog. i had minor troubles configuring X until i found the xautoconfig script, which puts out a predefined XF86Config file based on the kind of mac. playing CDs wouldn't work because the audiocd xmms plugin for playing CD audio like a data CD didn't work correctly. i had to get the audiocd source and add some checks for endianness. some day i'll put the code up. i sent a patch to the audiocd guy but no response. i still don't have audio recording working at all.

      but, usb mouse works, usb printer works, xmms works, touchpad works, etc. haven't tried the DVD player.

      • i had to get the audiocd source and add some checks for endianness. some day i'll put the code up. i sent a patch to the audiocd guy but no response. i still don't have audio recording working at all.

        Gee, don't you hate it when people don't even comment on your patch. I'd also post it to PPC linux website/log board thing [powerbooklinux.net].

        haven't tried the DVD player.

        DVD player works fine, once you've found all the endian patchs... ;-)

    • It is absolutely possible. There is a nice set of instructions at here [debian.org] for installing Debian. While it is explicitly about the iBook, the process should work on a Ti book just fine.

  • I'm running gcc-3.2 (with all libs compiled with 3.2). Are the C++ parts of Kylix compatible, and, if not, when does Borland plan to offer a gcc-3.2 compatible version of Kylix?

  • Google (Score:3, Funny)

    by joyoflinux ( 522023 ) <thejoyoflinux&yahoo,com> on Thursday August 29, 2002 @07:18PM (#4167433)
    Thank goodness for Google, which cached the original article.

    Tell that to this guy [slashdot.org].

  • Accountability in the Internet age? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by alienmole ( 15522 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @07:21PM (#4167448)
    Apologies for the Katzian subject line...

    I wonder if the behavior of organizations like eWeek will eventually change, as it becomes clear that when some questionable behavior is noticed and discussed publicly, that said organization can't just get away with quietly trying to hide the original problem?

    I think a big part of the behavior of execs at these companies - aside from the fact that they're businessmen, not journalists, and wouldn't know a journalistic ethic if it bit them in the MBA - is that the execs don't "feel" the criticism, because they don't participate in online forums, so at best, hear about it secondhand, and certainly don't feel threatened by it - they don't perceive it as "real".

    Before you scoff, I have an example. It was reported on TV the other day that Jeff Skilling, ex-CEO of Enron, currently hangs out at some chic club in Houston, essentially crying in his beer and asking people if they believe his claims of being innocent of wrongdoing.

    Regardless of Skilling's innocence or guilt, he clearly feels a great deal of shame (or is doing a decent job of pretending that). This guy's a Harvard-educated MBA, he's taught essentially that ethics are secondary to profit, and how to put that into practice, so why the shame?

    Because he has been publicly attacked and judged, in venues that he and his peers understand and participate in themselves - in this case, the major media, especially TV and print.

    When we have executives who've grown up IM'ing their buddies from their bedrooms, who have a feel for online media, will they be as averse to being excoriated in those media, as current execs are to the old media? Are we simply seeing a bunch of tired old companies trying to hide their heads in the sand and pretend that no-one sees what they're doing? When it's finally realized that this doesn't work, will it stop?

    Oh wait. This is the real world, and I'm talking about interminably idiotic human beings. Please ignore everything I've just said.

    • Blockquote the poster.
      Oh wait. This is the real world, and I'm talking about interminably idiotic human beings. Please ignore everything I've just said.
      True, people often don't respond until you hit them with a Clue-by-Fore, but people are quite good at avoiding pain. I think that those who "get the new media" (Katz-isms are useful, wow.) will react more readily than those who don't get it, BUT we will still need to hit them with that Clue-by-Four. It's just that the "new media types" will respond to more varieties of Clue-by-Four's than the old media types do, so it will appear that the new media types are more responsive/ethical/in-touch.

  • "Red Hat backlash" quote (Score:3, Informative)

    by squarefish ( 561836 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @07:25PM (#4167464)
    yes, they modified the online version, but they can't unprint it. I recieved my copy today and it's still there.
  • We also have full working sound and video on the iBook and Powerbook with XFree86, whereas YDL Does not yet support the mobile Radeon chipset found on those two units.

    I have trouble following the ongoing arms race between Apple's laptop designers and the benh kernels but -- don't YDL 2.2 and 2.3 support current iBooks and TiBooks, if maybe not in every last detail?

    They definitely work on most models with mobile Radeons, but there may have been a new revision I'm not aware of.

  • Garnome mirror (Score:3, Informative)

    by mindriot ( 96208 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @07:29PM (#4167486)
    I've mirrored the Galeon 2 web page and screenshots here [uni-karlsruhe.de].
    I sure hope Mozilla gets ported to gtk2 quickly, and maybe even Garnome features Galeon2 soon.

  • OSX + Fink = no need for a linux (Score:5, Informative)

    by IvyMike ( 178408 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @07:30PM (#4167492)

    When I bought my iBook, I also purchased Yellow Dog, because I feared that even though OSX is BSD under the hood, it wouldn't feel "Unixy" enough for me. But thanks to the porting efforts of the fink team, I have pretty much everything I'd want on my OSX box. In fact with X & Gnome, I have it set up to look exactly like my Solaris box at work. I ended up never installing YDL.

    Of course, I'm not everyone, so I'll ask: Is there any really compelling reason to go to a Linux distro left?

    • Some folks who purchased loads of G4s with pre-Jaguar OS X have a few compelling reasons to go to Linux, including but not limited to:
      - bugs
      - upgrade fees
      • Speed
      • WindowMaker running as a true root, instead of under XDarwin
      • A more familiar (to a Linux user) system layout
      • Easier to build un-finked software myself

      But, hey, it's all good, right?

    • Re:OSX + Fink = no need for a linux (Score:5, Informative)

      by kwalker ( 1383 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @07:52PM (#4167574) Journal
      Of course, I'm not everyone, so I'll ask: Is there any really compelling reason to go to a Linux distro left?

      Just off the top of my head:

      Speed - Even Ximian GNOME and KDE installed on my iBook are faster than OS X 10.1.5, and when I pair down to GkrellM+PMU and Enlightenment, it runs extremely quickly. I realize Jaguar is supposed to be faster, but I still doubt it is as fast.

      Stability - I know a dozen easy ways to cause the Finder and even the entire kernel to hang on an iBook (Hang to where you have to hold the power button). Granted OS X isn't as flakey as Windows, but it's still annoying being forced to wait through the two-minute boot sequence just because I take it to work with me and have NFS shares mounted in both locations.

      Battery Life - Because Linux wastes less cycles rendering PDF to my screen constantly, I get an extra 20 minutes per battery charge.

      Movie Playback - Funny as this may sound, MPlayer can play more movie types than QuickTime+DiVX5 codec, plus with the extra speed of the system, the movies play smoother.
      • "Stability - I know a dozen easy ways to cause the Finder and even the entire kernel to hang on an iBook (Hang to where you have to hold the power button). Granted OS X isn't as flakey as Windows"

        first you describe the kind of instability that i havent seen in windows since maybe 3.1, then throw in that its not as flakey as windows. care to describe flakey? you HAVE used windows since 3.1 right? win2k and xp are very stable operating systems.
    • Ok, gosh.. you bought your iBook, no need to show off on Slashdot. Some of us can't afford Apple hardware. To me, PC's are now 'good' enough and Windows 2000/XP is as good as operating systems get minus Microsoft using EULA's to have a backdoor to your computer.

      As for me, I'm pretty happy with Debian with Gnome 1.4 and KDE 3 .. I get my work done fast and efficient AND it looks pretty.
      • iBooks start at $1200- that's not too bad for a laptop. Maybe you are thinking of tiBooks, which start at $2500.

      • Ok, gosh.. you bought your iBook, no need to show off on Slashdot. Some of us can't afford Apple hardware.

        I hope you're thinking of the powerbooks (which are a little ostentatious), because the iBooks are actually pretty reasonable and are priced competitively with Wintel laptops. Apple desktops can seem pricey for what you get (although apple die-hards will argue on this) but I can't complain about their notebook prices. Look into it; you'll probably be surprised.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Hehheh, do you see how Trollburger was suddenly inspired to post something sensible there instead of the usual trolls ?

        I think someone pushed his button. ;)

        Mind you, I have to agree. I'm a convert to FreeBSD since about a year ago. I find it easier to administer and understand the workings of.

        graspee

      • You didnt think BSD was 'Unixy' enough for you!!?

        I agree with the main point you're making, so let me clarify: I feared the UI might not feel unixy enough for me. X, xterm, gnome, x's cut-n-paste, xpilot, xemacs, those type of things. (Pedantic people will argue these aren't really a part of Unix. There is a reason those people don't have many friends. :) The OSX guts are very clearly good unix guts, which is a big part of the reason I felt comfortable owning a mac for the first time in my life.

    • Yes, plenty. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by marm ( 144733 )

      Of course, I'm not everyone, so I'll ask: Is there any really compelling reason to go to a Linux distro left?

      Here's a good one: Speed.

      OS X is a fairly well engineered Unix but at its core is Mach, and Mach-based systems don't have a good reputation for performance. Darwin is better than most Mach-based systems but it's still a traditional message-passing nanokernel and there is a performance hit associated with that, compared to a monolithic kernel (of which Linux is an excellent example) or newer approaches to microkernel design like L4 (which the HURD, currently based on Mach, is gradually porting to).

      If you're developing POSIXy software on Apple hardware, the seconds you save on your compiles using Linux can very quickly add up into minutes, hours and days. This is especially true on SMP hardware - which of course, every PowerMac is now - where Linux currently scales better than anyone else, at least on systems up to about 8 processors.

      Similarly, if you're using the machine exclusively as a server (an area Apple is trying to push into), the extra speed of Linux may come in useful.

      In any case, if you're going to use the machine largely as a GNOME workstation, why not run it on Linux, where it runs fastest (insert rant by FreeBSD users) and has the least rough edges? You're obviously familiar with Unixes, and you use fink so you must be comfortable with apt-get. Why not use Debian where you use the same tools but have a far far larger package selection?

      You see, it depends on what you use your Mac for. If you absolutely must have some Cocoa-based apps, then yes, OS X is the better solution. If you want an idiot-proof interface, then yes, OS X is better. But if all your MacOS apps are Classic or Carbon then Mac-on-Linux works fine. Audio apps don't work so well, but then they don't under Classic on OS X and there's not much of a rush to make them run native on OS X, so either way it's a reboot into OS 9.

      Personally I think KDE is beginning to outclass OS X eye-candy wise (Keramik is drop-dead gorgeous and the Crystal icons are excellent too) so at the very least this is less of a factor than it used to be.

      Put simply: if you want Unix, well, OS X is a good Unix. But Linux is just better at it.

    • Re:OSX + Fink = no need for a linux (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MrEfficient ( 82395 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @09:29PM (#4167941)
      Uh, yes. It's called Freedom. It's always been the most compelling reason to use Free Software, although it's usually overlooked.

      Remember the recent story about Apple using the DMCA to threaten someone?

      Apple makes some cool stuff, and so does Microsoft. But neither respects your freedom.

      • Remember the recent story about [some Free Software writer] going all bezerk over [somebody else] violating the GPL?
      • then why would you buy there hardware?

        It seems to me that if you have no qualms about buying there hardware, the software would really matter.
    • Fink is the free software component of your operating system then. Thats one of the points of free software, so that people are free to do that kind of thing. If you install most of what you like from one operating system to another, that's not switching--that's adopting.

      Then, there's that whole *cough* freedom thing that people have their minds set not to take seriously. *cough* *cough*

      Did I mention how great I think Apple is? :)
  • The Galeon developments are nice. As someone who is forced to use Windows at my work computer, I keep waiting for developments from K-Meleon [sourceforge.net], the windows equivilent.

    K-Meleon 0.6 was released almost a year ago.

    I would also like to see a Mac version, but I guess I cannot have everything. iCab is pretty good on that platform.

    • I would also like to see a Mac version

      You mean like this [mozdev.org]?
      • I have tried Chimera several times, and it is looking better with each release, but it is still farm from being a complete browser (such a subjective term when you are talking about Mozilla-based browsers minus the bloat).

        It simply cannot do everything well just yet. Even K-Meleon, which seems to have stopped development a year ago is still slightly ahead of Chimera's development.

        My eternal concern, though, with Chimera is the size. 0.4 currently takes up over 20 megs of space on my hard drive for the application package. What is that about? I am not worried about running out of hard drive space, but I am wondering what is in that 20 megs...

    • Re:K-Meleon (Score:3, Informative)

      by x136 ( 513282 )
      FYI, Chimera [mozdev.org] is a Mac OS X web browser using the Gecko engine. It's not done, but it's supposed to be pretty nice.
    • Beta builds of K-Meleon are sometimes posted to the development forum [sourceforge.net] on the website.
    • The Galeon developments are nice. Yes, but what is even nicer is that Galeon is Mozilla without all the bloat. To the Galeon developers I say this: "Thank YOU!!! Galeon rocks, I'm so glad I've ditched Mozilla. But please, please don't develop this great browser to death. Small (and standards compliant) is beautiful.
  • I'm curious, as without the one off fee or per seat payment a developer/company/project may not make use of the MP3 patents (in countries the patents are recognised), will this mean that the various open source DVD and video projects cannot legally continue? As I understand certainly MPEG 2 (as used in DVD0 uses MP3 to encode the audio. Where does this software stand?

    Alex

    • (OT)DVD patents (Score:3, Informative)

      by yerricde ( 125198 )

      Anything Goes in a Slashback(tm)!

      As I understand certainly MPEG 2 (as used in DVD [Video]) uses MP3 to encode the audio.

      No, the version of MPEG-2 used in DVD Video uses Dolby's AC3 codec, generally in 2.0 or 5.1 channel configuration. One of the reasons Apple can't license iDVD free of charge to all Macintosh computer owners is that Apple must pay the MPEG-2 patent pool for each DVD encoding or decoding software product shipped.

      • Actually, you're both close.
        The DVD specification allows only AC-3 or PCM audio for NTSC DVDs, but also allows MPEG Layer 2 (not Layer 3, aka MP3) for PAL DVDs.

        I can't even begin to speculate why. ;)

  • Sony wouldn't care (Score:3, Funny)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @07:38PM (#4167520) Journal
    Wonder if Sony can get their money back

    you and i both know that it's just chump change for Sony. i mean... look at the music CD prices for a change? 16.99 for a CD that costs 5 cents to produce? even after royalties and packaging and the ads (and the really expensive RIAA lawyers)... they would still have bundles left over.

    so what's a couple million here and there... they probabbly paid it just so Forgent can afford some lawyers and Sony execs can have something to bet on.

    • "16.99 for a CD that costs 5 cents to produce"

      Do you have a reference for "5 cents to produce" or are you just making this up?

      I highly doubt it only costs 5 cents.

      • Re:Sony wouldn't care (Score:2, Informative)

        by lingqi ( 577227 )
        am not making the 5 cents up.

        i was refering to the stamping costs involved. not counting the artists and the cover designers etc. just the physical CDs.

        I got some CDs stamped before; twas ~50cents in quantities of ~2000 (that's WITH PRINTING), and IIRC the price dropped sharply as the quantity rose (as it should, thanks to the Gold -> mother -> father stamping method); i would not be surpriced if Sony's actual costs per CD (again, excluding case and stuff) are in the single digit region.

        i mean -- even if it costed them 50 cents / disc; and then you add the case, the booklet, and the royalties: it's still a *fat* profit margin, eh?
        • Figure about $3 for manufacturing, production and royalty costs for major mass market acts. Retailers (used to - haven't checked in a few years) pay between $7-$10 per CD in store, which they then sold for between $15-$18. The retailer's making a markup, and so are the record companies. On a $3 disc, they might make an extra 5 or 6 buck selling to retailers, who then double it. Yeah, that's a decent profit margin, but it's certainly not '5 cents -> $17' type margins.
    • You don't become a billionaire by writing a lot of checks.
      • You don't become a billionaire by writing a lot of checks.

        maybe. but when you are ALREADY a billioniare, it writing million-dollar checks certainly does not hurt as much. or, at all.

        sony had SALES of ~64 billion last year. they have 6.2 billion of *cash* hanging around. this is not mentioning their assets (don't even want to quote), and their brand image value (~30 billion last i checked). so, you tell me... 30 million check is worth _what_ to them exactly?

        putting it into perspective: if Sony was a person, who made 64k yearly income (reasonable example), he would have 6200 dollars in the bank, and the 30 million? that's a 30 dollar steak dinner.

        don't tell me that ain't chump change.

  • Mozilla vs Galeon... NOT (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ajs ( 35943 ) <{moc.sja} {ta} {sja}> on Thursday August 29, 2002 @07:38PM (#4167521) Homepage Journal
    Mozilla is two things, and many people get them confused. First, there's the browser that most Slashdotters know and some love.

    However, more fundamentally, there's the development platform which presents an XUL interface for developers to write their own applications. Mozilla the browser is one such application (the reference app, you might say), but so is Galeon. For that matter so are Netscape, Komodo (not a browser, but an IDE!) and at some point, presumably AOL's UI.

    When we compare these apps to Mozilla, it's kind of like comparing XFree86 to the MIT reference server. Yes, there's some value in the comparison, but let us not forget that the one is built on top of the other, and here's to hoping that Galeon (in which I'm writing this) becomes as mature and feature-rich as XFree86!

    [NOTE: Yes, it's only a loose comparison, since XFree has re-written much of the internals of the MIT refernce server, where Galeon is pretty much layered right atop the Mozilla framework. Still, it's the best comparison I can think of right now]
    • However, more fundamentally, there's the development platform which presents an XUL interface for developers to write their own applications. Mozilla the browser is one such application (the reference app, you might say), but so is Galeon. For that matter so are Netscape, Komodo (not a browser, but an IDE!) and at some point, presumably AOL's UI.

      Galeon uses the mozilla renderer, but it doesn't use XUL. It's not an XUL application.
      • You're technically correct, though I never actually said "Galeon is written in XUL", I did imply it. Sorry, I had a phone screen to do in 3 minutes, and I was rushing. What I meant was
        Mozilla is a development platform. It provides an XUL interface do developers AS WELL AS A NUMBER OF COMPONENTS WHICH CAN BE USED MODULARLY to write their own applicaitons. Mozilla the browser is one such application (the reference app, you might say), but so is Galeon. For that matter so are Netscape, Komodo (not a browser, but an IDE!) and at some point, presumably AOL's UI.
        It's interesting to note that AOL will probably be more Galeon-like in the sense that they're not planning to use XUL either, just the rendering engine.

        Then again "rendering engine" might be a bit misleading. There's a whole lot of Mozilla in Galeon, and the two are not really seperate applications. This is, IMHO, a good thing. We're reaching the point where large systems like a Web browser can be modularized and re-build when needed. I use Galeon on a day-to-day basis, and I never have to go back to Mozilla to get a page to render correctly, because it would be the same. I do keep Netscape around for those few times that I feel the need to get some wizzy, extra-plugin thing to work. I don't want Galeon to render Flash, Java, etc. So, I use Netscape (7) as a sort of alternate configuration.

    • Er, do you even know what XUL is? The *reason* galeon is so fast compared to mozilla is because it *does not* use XUL to build it's GUI. XUL is slow, and is essentially just a fancy pants way to do DHTML. Galeon doesn't use XUL in any way to build it's UI, it is a GTK application which links into the Gecko rendering engine.

  • I don't know about Galeon2... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @07:52PM (#4167570) Homepage Journal
    But Galeon 1 is a damn fine web browser. I've been using it exclusively for several months now. Tabbed browsing is addictive and you have menu options to turn on or off Java, Javascript, pop up windows and animation. You really don't realize how obnoxious the web really is until you turn all that stuff off and run without it for a few days.

    The rendering is generally pretty snappy, though I have hit a few pages that make it take a long pause, I assume to shuffle doument elements around the screen (The business section of cnn.com is particularly bad for this.)

    All in all it's a great browser. You don't realize how much you come to depend on its features until you're stuck using another one, too. The Dev team did an excellent job; kudos to them.

    • The only times Galeon has hung on me is when its rasterizing fonts. a quick switch to a terminal and a run of top shows that xfs or xfstt are chewing up all my cpu. google seems to do this a lot to me.

      I think wine gets around this (that big wait first time you run wine), not sure why gnome doesnt do the same thing.

  • Galeon: My Browser of Choice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coupland ( 160334 ) <dchase@ho[ ]il.com ['tma' in gap]> on Thursday August 29, 2002 @07:54PM (#4167581) Journal
    I've just gotta say that I think Galeon is the best thing to come out of the Mozilla work to date. Maybe newbs like mediocre e-mail clients and other whiz-bangs built into their browsers, me... I like a browser. One that's fast, intuitive, fast, simple, feature-rich, and fast. Galeon is all of these, and fast to boot! My biggest complaint about it is there isn't (nor likely ever will be) a Windows version I can use when surfing at work. But from home, nothing can top it!


    • > I like a browser. One that's fast, intuitive, fast, simple, feature-rich, and fast.

      The G2 link is /.ed, so maybe this is already on the agenda... but if any developers are reading this, the enhancements that would please me best would be to support preferences that let me treat JavaScript, image loads, etc., exactly the way I treat cookies now: pop up an "Allow this?" query the first time I visit the site, and remember my answer for next time I visit.

      But it's already one fine browser. Just fetched the 1.2.5 update a couple of days ago.

    • If your looking for a stripped down browser based on gecko for windows I suggest you try K-Meleon [sourceforge.net]. Its been a while since I've actually tried it, but the last build I used worked quite well and was very snappy.

  • Forgent vs. Thompson (JPEG vs. MP3 on patents) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kiwi ( 5214 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @08:01PM (#4167606) Homepage Journal
    There is a key difference between the forgent patent (which they wish covered JPEG) and the MP3 patents: The MP3 patents are patents owned by the people who invented MP3, and, as it turns out, invested a good deal of money in making MP3 a reality. The Forgent patent, on the other hand, is not a patent made by anyone who invented JPEG. It is a patent which has some similarities to JPEG, but the similarities are based on prior knowledge in the field concerning DCTs and run-length encoding.

    MP3 has a right to do anything they want with their patent; we have Ogg so if Thompson gets to be too nasty about enforcing MP3, we can simply switch over (as RedHat is doing). Remember: Thompson has never hid the fact that they had a patent on MP3; the people who made MP3 a popular format for pirating music in fact broke Thompson license agreements and copyrights. I seriously doubt that they will go after the XMMS developers (free MP3 decoder for Linux); they aren't even going after the Lame developers (Free MP3 encoder for Linux). They make a good deal from money from MP3 hardware players and from commercial MP3 encoders/decoders for Windows (money they deserve to earn); they won't go after anything free for Linux because that will just make for less MP3 users and more OGG users.

    Forgent, on the other hand, has no right to JPEG. This is simply a case of some greedy corporate types who saw that their company was going down the tubes--this happens to companies which do not provide goods and services of value for people any more. Instead of providing something of value, they went through their patent profile and found something that looked like a patent on JPEG. In their greed, they blackmailed some large Japanese corporations, some of whom gave in easily--I guess giving money to shady organizations is an accepted norm in their culture.

    Naturally, once their actions became public, the reaction was outrage. And well it should have been--Forgent did nothing to help invent JPEG or make the JPEG image format a reality. All they did was make a different motion video format which had some similarities to JPEG--simply because the cutting edge of image compression at the time was based on DCTs and run-length encoding. Any similarities their format has to JPEG is because both JPEG and Forgent's thingy used the same previously invented principles. If Forgent did, in fact, invent JPEG, and never hid the fact it was patented, we would be in a different situtation. Since Forgent did neither, they do not have a chance of winning a court case.

    If I were Sony, I would sue Forgent for making false patnet claims or some such.

    - Sam

    • In their greed, they blackmailed some large Japanese corporations, some of whom gave in easily--I guess giving money to shady organizations is an accepted norm in their culture.
      So, which culture has a habit of giving money to shady organizations? As has been mentioned before, if royalties payment are less than litigation, the royalty payments make a lot of sense.

      For furture reference, unles your audience is a bunch of bigoted yahoos, random xenophobic statemnents tends to make an argument less effective.

      • For furture reference, unles your audience is a bunch of bigoted yahoos, random xenophobic statemnents tends to make an argument less effective.

        Interesting that you perceived the statement as being bigoted. I did not see the statement as being bigoted; I saw the statement as being an observation which I have been making, based on a friend with an Japanese wife and a love for animae and some Japanese ex-coworkers.

        My general observation is that when a company has a patent claim of dubious merit, such as Rambus, it is very common for the Japenese companies (Hitaci, etc.) to cave in. On the other hand, US comapnies usually have a courtroom battle (Prodigy vs. British Telecom; Amazon vs. Barns and Noble; etc.). I think it is perfect reasonable to conclude that Japenese companies are more likely to give the patent holder the money they ask for without a courtroom fight than an American company, even if the patent in question is of dubious merit.

        I also have observed that Japan is still recovering, in many ways, from the extensive damage that the US did to Japan in World War II. A lot of the animae has scenes of widespread distruction and doomsday senerios; there are cartoons in Japan which show what US's extensive bombing campaign did to their cities. One reason the US had such a vicious bombing campaign was because Japan had a sense of pride which made them fight to the last man in many WWII battles. The children of WWII saw how this pride resulted in their country being led to the brink of destruction; I feel it is reasonable to conclude that they do not have the desire to engage in conflict the way people in the US do any more (Observe: George Bush's desire to battle Iraq even though almost every other country does not want a battle there).

        In addition, I have read Pearl S Buck's The Good Earth (I had to read it in high school; its amazing how reading that stuff actually helps in the real world). The book has one plot point where the hero has an (IIRC: If I recall correctly) uncle which demands some money from him; he starts to argue until the uncle in question shows him a symbol indicating that he is part of a Chinese mafia-type organization. At this point, he submits and gives the uncle the money he asks for. While this book takes place in China, not Japan, it shows a long-standing tradition of people of shady nature bilking money out of honest workers in an Asian culture.

        Making an observation about how a Japanese company responds to a questionable patent claim differently than an American company is one that respects Japan's culture. I hope that political correctness is not gotten to the point that trying to make observations about different cultures is somehow xenophobic.

        - Sam

        • You make well reasoned points. If you look at your original post though, it did indeed seem bigoted. Obviously, we don't know you, so if you make comments like the one you did without some perspective about the comment then you should expect someone to call you on it. That's not just being PC or even in being in fear of PC; it's just normal people trying to be decent.

  • Drag and drop tabs. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @08:14PM (#4167656) Homepage
    gEdit and some other GTK+ based applications have some pretty nifty tabbed effects: basically, dragging one out of a window makes a new window. Dragging it back into another windows combines the tabs into one main parent window.

    How handy is that? Very handy! It makes the interface a lot easier to use, and more obvious. You just drag what you want to where it should be and use it :) If Mozilla could somehow support that, I'd be much happier with it.
  • The link on Borland's page to download kylix is broken (as of 9:30 PM EDT). No party for me yet...
    • The link worked for me as of 10:15 EDT.

      However, the software itself is less than rock solid so far on my Debian Woody system:

      Install went fine, ran fine, but died as soon as autocompletion tried to kick when I started typing code.

  • "open popups in tabs" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jfedor ( 27894 ) <jfedor@jfedor.org> on Thursday August 29, 2002 @08:37PM (#4167746) Homepage
    The single most important feature that makes me use Galeon over Mozilla is the option to open popups in a new tab. I consider this better than completely banning unrequested popups, because some sites use the popups for stuff other than ads. I think every browser with tabs should have this option and I have only seen it in Galeon. (Does Konqueror have it? I don't have a recent enough version.)

    -jfedor

    • I partially agree. The problem with that option is many window popups, which are designed to open in a certain size window, just look plain dumb in tabs, with the layout all whacky because the developer is expecting an X by Y window instead of a 1024x768 tab.

      That being said, Galeon isn't the only browser that does this. Konqueror (my choice browser) has this option as well, at least in the CVS version I run.

  • ferpa is necessary and helpful (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29, 2002 @08:38PM (#4167747)
    ...This is one time where I *must* hide behind the AC to post something...

    I recently had my educational records sealed at my university through FERPA. Most of my privacy options can be set online through the university's private portal. This portal allows me to pay tuition, register for classes, check grades, etc. FERPA cannot be done through this system and you must come in person to give the administration a written notice to activate "FERPA". The reason why I did this was because I was applying for summer jobs at the local places such as Costco, Circuit City, The Good Guys, and other places. A lot of the places ask for educational history and the contact info on where to get transcripts. I found that very odd since the work I was going to do was brainless sales work. Interestingly, every place attempted to get my records. What's even more amazing is that my university called me and said that a certain store was using my social security number in an attempt to get my transcript. That same store claimed that they were me and wanted the transcript. When I got the phone call, I went ahead and called up the store to ask them what they were up to. They denied everything but my university is required to report the incident. Its nice to have such things, since I know where not to go next time.
    • I don't see the need to AC yourself. If they're doing it to you, they're doing it to thousands of job applicants around the country. Add to that the extreme unlikelihood that anybody from Costco's HR department even knows what Slashdot is, and I think you're pretty safe here.
    • This will only get worse, here in the U.S., ever since the September 11th. terrorist scare.

      In my current job search, I'm amazed at how much personal information and background checking they do, even for minimum wage sales jobs.

      Stores like Radio Shack do much more checking than they've ever done before, and for what? So you can earn $5.15 an hour plus commission selling their crappy products?

      One of the job-search portals I recently visited had a huge advertisement on the front page telling employers to try out their paid background checking service. It went on to brag how many large businesses use them for each new applicant, including Edward Jones, Anheiseur Busch Breweries, etc. etc.

      I can easily see this turning into the same fiasco we have now with credit agencies. Some schmuck incorrectly enters a piece of data into the database, and for years - you're stuck with a mark on your record that you can't seem to get removed. Where can we call to request a free copy of our background check, to verify that the information on file is correct? (Can we even do this at all??)

      This brings up another related point. What's with companies saying your employment may be based partially on your credit history? Why is it their business at all what your past credit history is? Honestly, as an employer, I'd probably *prefer* someone with a lot of recent bad credit - because that sounds to be like an individual who is out of money and really needs a job! At least he/she has some real motivation to show up to work on time every day.

  • Galeon Performance. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dsb3 ( 129585 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @09:01PM (#4167841) Homepage Journal
    Galeon has been my browser of choice for many months. I think I started using it at about v0.9, give or take a month or so.

    I love it, can't live without it, but ... it's got a problem. It's slowing down.

    My hardware hasn't changed (dual p3-500) other than bumping ram from 256M to 512M, but with each new galeon release it's turned from lightning to treacle. Opening a new window takes *seconds*. Opening a number of new windows at the same time is painful.

    So ... what's up with that? Will I expect better from galeon2, or will it just slow down further, forcing me to change camps - I certainly don't want to buy new processors because an application drifted towards bloatware!!

    • Re:Galeon Performance. (Score:4, Informative)

      by walt-sjc ( 145127 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @11:46PM (#4168184)
      If you have migrated from version to version, something is probably
      fucked up in your old config files.

      Backup your bookmarks and settings, and delete the .galeon directory tree. It will recreate it.

      Galeon is faster than hell here on a wimpier machine.

  • You can order the DC BBA through NCSX (Score:4, Informative)

    by orbital3 ( 153855 ) on Thursday August 29, 2002 @09:15PM (#4167891)
    You can preorder your DC BBA through NCSX [ncsx.com], a reputable import gaming retailer, for only $49, less than the original BBA cost from Sega. Their site seems to be undergoing some work right now, but I placed my order a few days ago, $56.13 shipped! No, I don't work for them, but it's a great way for us who can't read Japanese to get in on this deal. I just hope it hits 1000 orders...

  • Galeon 2 Wish List (Score:2, Interesting)

    by slagdogg ( 549983 )
    • Better mouse gestures. Currently, mouse gestures won't get recognized until the current page is fully loaded. This is horribly frustrating when you try to issue a 'stop loading' mouse gesture that doesn't register until ... well, you get it.
    • Less slow down when working with many tabs. When I have > 15 or so tabs (I won't mention the circumstances when this might happen ... hehe), every Galeon operation takes forever, even though system resources are readily available. Maybe a Mozilla issue.
    • Per-frame page magnification adjustments. Currently changing the setting applies to all frames, would be nice to only affect the one with current focus.
    • A new name. I'm sick of people calling my favorite browser 'Gay Leon' (not that there's anything wrong with that!).
  • intresting quote the author made about the red hat statement
    "I suspect the original quote never happened.""
    notice it's has a woutes only on 1 side.....wonder if that was on purpose.

  • Tab name shortening (Score:4, Informative)

    by npj ( 563302 ) on Friday August 30, 2002 @12:45AM (#4168334)
    If you want tab name shortening in Mozilla, then please take the time to vote for and indicate support for it here [mozilla.org] in bug 126611.

    Currently this enhancement is marked as WONTFIX, which is the wrong decision IMO.

  • Pot's comment upon kettle's abedo (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Friday August 30, 2002 @07:00AM (#4168943) Homepage Journal
    I find it very strange that a Slashback would criticize a news web site for silently altering a story, when Slashdot itself does this on a regular basis.

    Come on guys, show the world the correct way - make ALL the editors make ALL changes as addenda to the story, rather than in-line. After all, if I cannot change my posting once I hit SUBMIT, then you shouldn't be able to change your stories.

    If you wish to correct minor speling (sic) errors, then correct them by marking the old text as strikethrough, and then inserting the new. Yes, it won't look as nice, but it will be more honest. And perhaps when the /. editors see how many strikethroughs the main page has, they will incorporate a spell check into the story submission system.
  • Your search - cache:miW9o7Rra4gJ:www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,4 84704,00.asp "There is a backlash against Red Hat - did not match any documents.

  • I sure would like to buy a PowerPC computing preinstalled with Debian from Europe, but I fear Swiss taxes and the cost of transport would kill the deal for me...

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