I was happy when Firefox 19 added its own PDF reader like Chrome did long ago. Now Firefox is the default PDF reader on my machine -- I uninstalled Adobe Reader.

At some point recently Firefox made insecure plugins (Flash when outdated, for example) click-to-play by default, which is also nice.

I guess the point is that after the ~6 month wait between Firefox 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. now we no longer have to wait half a year for these small but helpful new features. Security patches are going to happen regularly (monthly?) anyway, so now Mozilla just bundles new features along with the patches.

it would be quite funny if Microsoft were somehow forced to sue Nokia for patent infringement.

at work i use Windows and Redhat, and at home i use Windows, Ubuntu and Android. i've had several bad experiences with Apple so i stopped using their products.

my Apple-using friends are a really interesting group. i know a graphic designer and movie director who both have Macbooks and iPhones. i know librarians and schoolteachers who use Macs and iPods. i also know a few computer scientists who use Macs and feature phones.

the designer & director are expert at multimedia software but that's it. the computer scientists like the Mac for easy command-line access. the librarian and schoolteacher know the least in the group about computers. they parrot the "i'm a Mac" ads and even sometimes try to shame me into dumping Windows, because Macs are "cooler" and "no one uses Windows". i'm not saying that Windows is cool or perfect, but this is how they think.

i've never seen the librarian and schoolteacher do anything computer-related other than check email and Facebook. when i explained how Adblock works, the librarian responded "Mac users don't have those problems".

out of all my friends, i would say that only the computer scientists are knowledgeable enough to recognize and avoid security threats. i wouldn't be surprised if the others fell victim to phishing schemes or worse. everyone (except the computer scientists) uses Safari because it was preinstalled, i suppose.

so yeah, i have a bunch of friends who use Macs, and that's where the similarities end.

And segregation didn't exist as a concept in 1600s, 1700s, or early 1800s america. The southern states treated blacks as slaves, and the northern states treated "freemen" blacks the same as whites

You mention the southern states as if they were a different country. I think you're exaggerating about how many free blacks there were, and about the rights they enjoyed. Free blacks were the exception, not the rule.

A few states adopted "gradual emancipation" laws in the 1780s, and by 1800 only ten percent of blacks were free. This hardly sounds like racial equality.

The scarcity of free blacks isn't surprising, however, considering that the vast majority of blacks were concentrated in the South until the Great Migration of the 20th century.

Of course all history should be judged morally from your superior moral perspective, rather than evaluated by its actual effect on the world. BTW, the right of conquest was then perfectly normal practice (therefore not wrong, for "wrong" is subjective), and its practitioners included Native Americans (participants in the French and Indian War, etc) and Japanese, though the Japanese were busy with domestic affairs and had not yet met Commodore Perry. :)

Not trying to sound superior, I merely was pointing out that many Americans were not included when rights were granted. You're right about Japanese-Americans but I included them because of their poor treatment during World War II.

Happy Independence Day.

False. "Freemen" had the same rights as whites

False. Hate crimes, segregation and intimidation were common until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. My parents grew up in the 1950s when there were "whites only" restaurants, etc.

Glad someone mentioned this. It's difficult for me to take the Declaration of Independence seriously when blacks didn't get rights until almost 200 years later... not to mention the plight of Native Americans, Japanese-Americans, etc.

I always have mixed feelings about reports of abuse by police. I hate police harassment as much as anyone and I know people personally who have been victims.

On the other hand, I live in an American city where three policemen were ambushed and shot to death six months ago, another policeman was shot to death last week, and finally a policewoman was almost carjacked yesterday.

You may be correct that statistically, police work is no more dangerous than other jobs. Emotionally, I do think there is a big difference between working a job where violence is expected instead of, say, being a farmer trying to avoid farming accidents.

Police are jumpy and have a good reason to be. When I'm around them I never get too close.

yes, i got the same feeling that Cringely doesn't understand the relationship between Google and Microsoft.

Cringely writes:

The vast majority of Google searches are, of course, done on PCs running Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. It is not in Google's real interest to displace these products, which have facilitated so much of its success.

i don't think Google cares what operating system and browser people use. a Google search is a Google search, no matter what platform/browser it comes from.

i stopped reading the article after seeing this.

from TFA:

( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5516536/US-cities-may-have-to-be-bulldozed-in-order-to-survive.html )
"Most are former industrial cities in the "rust belt" of America's Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis."