I thought they EOL'd it when the 90's called...

Well since niether have any actual evidence of their claims, I dont think you have to agree with either. Google may really have wanted the Nortel Patents, but to think they bought Motorola on some threat FROM Motorola, is a little hard to fathom. I do believe the bit about MS bidding for Moto though.

Why wouldn't the patents help against MS/Apple?

I could see the argument that they wouldnt help vs Oracle, but not against MS/Apple?

But Gruber is some mac fanatic spinning wild fabrications. It was clear in the original Slashdot article about his "interpretation" of some PR speak at a conference that he was imagining his own little reality with regards to Motorola's plans. They say something to the effect of "IP is important" and he translated that to "Moto is going all patent RABMO!" (exagerating here but it's not far off).

Driving the price up for Oracle, RIM, Apple and MS is good business. Google has been known to bid just to drive prices in the past.

As for MS acquiring Moto, I'd be a little surprised if they had a serious offer on the table. I'd wager they were also trying to drive price. These things make sense, Gruber's fantasy land doesn't.

As for HTC, Samsung, et al. I would guess that Google offered them some protection from Apple and MS to help reassure them that Android is worth sticking with. I'm sure hardware manufacturers are privately evaluating long term plans, and it would be silly to think Google would give no preference to Motorola at some point eventually. But for the next year or two at the very least, I'd wager most of the Android hardware companies are on board, but keeping a keen eye on things.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Assembler_%28computer_programming%29#Related_terminology

Thank you for calling Verizon. To go to the main menu, press 1. To exit this menu and go to the main menu, press 2. To return to the main menu, press 3. To hear these options again, press 4.

4

Goodbye.

we had to code uphill in 10 feet of snow on an abacus using roman numerals.

Works fine for me. I just won 2 free $250 Walmart Pirce club cards and I get 20% off my next purchase of a HiPhone 5 Nano from Somy. Pretty exciting.

True, but they weren't sure how it would all turn out. I think while the summary is basied, they do a good job of admitting that it was partly their fault in the article, and something to watch out for. I think this also speaks to gaps between ad-supported apps and paid apps. Ad-supported will often out-perform paid apps leaving paid "tool" style apps and "use quickly once a day" apps at a severe diadvantage to games and other content style apps. This is despite the fact that the amount of work required to create both kinds of apps may very well be equal in many cases. Anyways, trolltastic summary for sure, but the article bias wasn't as bad.

Exactly my thoughts as well. It also appears to move them one step further away from potential spills and the bad publicity that follows. The exploration units wont be household names. BP tried to hide that it basically owned that platform in the Gulf by outsourcing it IIRC. So this looks to possibly be another layer to hide profits and more. This isn't free markets creating competition and innovation, this is shell games and accounting tricks. It's also ridiculous to think ExxonMobil is somehow powerless at the behest of Wall Street traders when it was the #1 most profitable company in 2010. They dont tremble when a barrel of crude hits $100+, they laugh all the way to the bank.

Thank you for the link, very informative.

I thought the privacy robbing stuff was already there in HTML5 with local storage, and the like. It's the vector rendering animation engine, tools, text rendering, DRM, and ubiquitous video platform that are lagging. Isn't that the crux of some of the new "super" undeletable cookies? They make use of HTML5, JS, fIngerprinting, Flash, regular cookies, and more.

There is also a highly subjective argument to be made that ActionScript far outpaces JavaScript in feature and elegance -- being more akin to C#. (Also possibly performance. It certainly had a JIT first, though Adobe contributed some of the JIT to FF for JavaScript IIRC, but I dont think they use that JIT anymore) . But that's subjective so take it as you will. HTML does have some long held advantages with regards to reflowing content though.

There really are legit reasons to dislike Flash, dont get me wrong -- the privacy controls should be more easily discoverable and integrated with the browser. And it does hog CPU to give performance. But this kinda angry spite seems uninformed and unhelpful. IMHO, if people want Flash to go away, build alternatives, dont complain.

With things like FlashBlock and NoScript we've got it (relatively) easy these days when we want to block unwanted content. But if we removed Flash from the equation, you will just end up having privacy invanding HTML local storage with CPU hogging sites that are renderd completely in a canvas tag. Bad sites and ads aren't bad because of Flash, they are bad because of the motivations behind the people that built them. Those motivations wont change just because of HTML5.

Do people forget the GIFs that used to blink and fly accross the pages of bad sites in the pre-Flash days?

Because there are thousands of new "developers" unwilling to learn correct FORTRAN.

/Silly flamebait is silly

While certainly no one wants to be bombarded with 100,000 config options, I think you can agree there has been a movement to hide and simplfy UIs over the past few years especially, and that this particular UI looks more sparse than the last which looked more sparse than the previous and so on. I highly doubt we're just going to go to all text lists like in the past (and I wouldn't want that), but it was an example of a consistent UI element people have long learned to understand almost intuitively. There are others too, but it was just an example. The other point that's important to remember here is that everyone categorizes a bit differently. They may not think in the same terms as the UI designer.

And I use about:config. But I was talking about non-tech savvy users and how options are presented to them. Kind of an important part of the point.
 
And no, I wont be complaining about long lists, I'm saying that's one of the few things usability has taught most people over the years. It's (part of) why most webpages scroll down. People get that. Why would you think I would complain about the opposite? Anyways, I'm sorry but I dont get where you're coming from with that comment other than it seems like you're trying to be rude because you're frustrated at what you think I'm saying (which I am not).

I understand you are designing for the lowest common denominator. It makes sense, and I can see where you are going with this design direction.

However, please be sure to allow configurability at the very least, and even better resist the urge to remove UI elements and hide them behind menus.

I dont want more buttons hidden behind more menus that require more clicks. On my desktop I have a large amount of room and like all my important options in front of me. That's why it's a great computing device for work. On my mobile phone, a sparse UI is much appreciated. But I dont really need it, nor want it, on a desktop. It doesnt make any sense in keeping with the idea of easy "discoverability" in user experience design. It also could easily confuse users even more than you think.
 
Most users can learn to recognize that a little "house" icon is the home screen. However, many users will not understand that setting the home page is under [alt] > Tools > options > General tab. Non-tech savvy people dont understand all of this multi layered categorization. They may not think the same way the developers and designers do, and may not put the option under the same category if they were doing the organization. They also may understand what they need, but not what the categories mean. Simple UI controls work better for most people. As an example: almost everyone understand lists and scrolling, even if they are very long lists.

It would also be nice if the bugs regarding new versions of FF corrupting profiles be looked into. And I don't know of any users that really feel the new "rapid release" stuff is worth a dime. The people who know what it means think it's silly, and the people who don't wouldn't care anyways.

Don't get me wrong, you guys have done fantastic work over the years. And the world owes you *much* gratitude. But I feel the need to speak up at some of the recent changes in direction Mozilla has been making with FF and TB. A need I have never felt before regarding either product. As a fan I wish you all the best though and hope to keep using FF and TB as I have never been that interested in Chrome or Gmail.