Mozilla removes -moz-opacity; man threatens to sue for $18,000 | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla removes -moz-opacity; man threatens to sue for $18,000

bugzilla.mozilla.org

81 pointspavel_lishin60 comments

I like how he says in one sentence that maintaining code is too hard, and then in the next, asks Mozilla to maintain extra code. It is scary how few programmers realize that software they use every day is the same as software they write themselves. There is no magic.

Also, duuuude, the site in question is awesome: http://www.constellation7.org/Constellation-Seven/Josiah/Ind...

While the site is indeed good, if you want truly awesome, BEHOLD the POWER of the TIME CUBE: http://www.timecube.com/

Too LONG; didn't READ.

To make it easier for everyone, the comment where he demands the cash is here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765645#c13 - otherwise you have to read through lots of drivel before you get to the juicy part. This guy sounds absolutely nuts, the other property for opacity has been supported for over 8 years now and the dude is still using old code? Wow.

I just ctrl+f'd for the amount mentioned, got to the juicy part as well ^^

"Estimate this to be around 100 hours of time, as it has to be done manually in text files for every single instance of the code"

search and replace anyone?? carefully crafted query using even Funduc S&R would take it max 5 minutes... but hey, given the content of the site... I would be afraid of a guy quoting bible verses in replies too!

The bug was filed by no less than YHWH Himself. I've heard of cases where people tried to sue God, but this is the first time I've seen the reverse. Can't He just smite them?

For those who dont get it (as I didn't): http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=YHWH

For some reason I'm bothered by you saying 'get it' and linking to urbandictionary. To me it implies some kind of slang word or internet term. So I'll link a more normal dictionary or two.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/YHWH http://dictionary.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/yhwh

The urban dictionary entry is the first one using YHWH in the link title in my google results. It's the third result total, but the first two use 'Yahweh' in the link title, not YHWH

Yeah, sad that he had to bring all the religious references into the discussion.

Some Christian people (not nearly all) think that the correctness of their belief system is so obvious to everyone, that those around them will be inspired to bend over backwards to help at the mere mention of the fact that the person is a Christian.

It is a weird phenomenon and it usually has the opposite effect on me because it shows that the person doesn't even understand what his/her own religion is supposed to be about.

Amen to that brother ;)

Yeah, I agree, Christianity is not the magic ticket to get whatever you want - kinda the opposite of the Bible's teaching on the subject, actually. Makes me cringe when you see stuff like that original thread: he's choosing to be a representative of God (which I believe that Christians are), but is in the process demanding that we or Mozilla or whatever bend to his will.

(Note: I am a Christian myself)

Time to get a new username

The Mozilla devs were surprisingly civil and patient with him. Kudos to them.

http://www.constellation7.org

I think we've just found this generation's TimeCube.com

I had a hard time taking his complaint seriously after looking at his website.

But if you look at it with firefox 12 (before firefox 13) you'll understand his point a lot more vividly. With that opacity, it used to look great. Now... it's all broken. :/

"Quicktime needs your permission to run."

"Java needs your permission to run."

"Flip4Mac needs your permission to run."

"The page at www.constellation7.org says..."

Yikes.

for mockability, this is the web design equivalent of Icy Hot Stuntaz

BTW, can't they just leave the legacy behaviour in quirks mode only or does slimness and catching Chrome trump functionality?

It's better, cause there's a version formatted in .doc for all your offline needs: http://www.constellation7.org/Salvation/Salvation.doc

This make 1986 Print Shop hot shots look like Michelangelo in comparison.

surely this must be a troll... please let it be a troll.

Edit: OH DEAR LORD look at their web page!!!

http://www.constellation7.org

Oh wow. Don't mouse over the sidebar links with your speakers up.

Did you get what song it played? I cracked up hard.

I... How did... You can't even scroll down...

Yeah you can, AFTER the transparency effects ends !! That's an awesome wait to replace a dumb "loading... please wait" now?

Hey now, just try to imagine how bad it would look without his fading images! One could see why he'd be so upset!

I got prompted by Chrome to allow 3 different plugins to run on the homepage alone.

This site might be useful to the internet as the canonical web design anti-pattern repository.

> We just create visually appealing, informative and Evangelical websites since AD 1997. - YHWH

emphasis mine.

That's weird... I've never felt my brain physically try to escape my skull before.

Intense Multimedia Website http://cl.ly/image/0O1O151l1f0M

how can this not be a troll??

"HONESTLY, it's just plain senseless destruction of a set of attractive visual effects that should be ALLOWED to be seen...."

edit: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765645#c10

Definitely a troll

It looks much better with an older version of firefox before version 13. The opacity:0.7 rollovers really make it. Without them... it just falls flat.

with NoScript it was just poorly formatted coloured text on a white background. Enabling javascript nowOH DEAR LORD

Yeah, this has to be satire.

"i wrote most of the special effects code by hand using notepad"

I think we should give this person the benefit of doubt and treat him/her like a troll.

"Yes, external CSS style sheets ARE BETTER..just haven't had the time to even CONSIDER doing this yet..." -YHWH

Why do these guys even bother to give people like this the time of day?

"My hourly rate as CEO of this Corporation is HK$1900 or US$247.00 per hour.

Think that with a discount, US$18,000 should be sufficient to cover all my time related costs, fixing ALL code instances, for ALL the aforestated reasons..."

Then he adds:

"Thanks a bunch for being SO HELPFUL !!!"

Also, $18,000/$247.00/hour comes out to about 72 hours.

His first post was on 2012-06-17 21:06:44 PDT and his last post was on 2012-06-19 23:11:22 PDT, so it's only been ~50 hrs since he posted it until he asked for the money.

I once worked as a customer service staffer for a phone company. I was extremely surprised by the number of people complaining about service being cut for not paying bills who were "stockbrokers" losing "thousands per hour". Really, sir? Most of them knew their bluff was called when we told them about the difference between residential-class and business-class services, but a few hardy souls would stick on. Strangely enough, those few hardy souls whose time is worth thousands an hour were rarely willing to pay a phone bill worth a hundred...

ISP tech support is the same way. The guy paying $30/month for his internet is complaining that he has lost tens of thousands of dollars today. Perhaps he should invest in some redundancy if the internet is so important to him.

Isn't this obviously mental illness? Should we be mocking that?

Or a troll...

I was assuming this guy was some sort of troll, though the website seems too elaborate (and horrible). I think he's actually being serious...

This one made me chuckle

> Ideally, ALL browsers SHOULD support ALL extensions,

I don't think he quite gets it.

I don't see a threat to sue here? I see him saying he will send Mozilla an invoice for $18,000 based on his (very rough, very inaccurate, very arbitrary) estimate, but there's no legal force behind that. It clearly was an idle threat and his last responses seem to indicate he was resigned to having to eat his labor and treat the cost as a lesson learned.

But the title of this post is a bit inaccurate in that he didn't threaten to sue. He threatened to send Mozilla an invoice for his work, but he came out looking very foolish, and ended up tucking tail.

He did said he would take them to court if they didn't pay the invoice. It was clearly an idle threat, though.

Ignoring his tone, it is a fair question: why not keep the prefixed alias?

In the thread, multiple people answered his question. Here are the two most significant reasons that I noticed.

1. The prefix was already not being supported by most browsers, thus supporting it would mean supporting the development of websites that don't work properly in other browsers.

2. Best practices suggest that one shouldn't rely solely on the prefixed version of an experimental alias. If this developer had written good code to start with, he wouldn't have had the problems he ran into.

Code maintenance isn't free. An unmaintainable codebase can easily kill a project after awhile.

The Mozilla developers explain the reasoning at length.

They don't want to tie people to Firefox. So when a standards-compliant version of a CSS directive becomes available, they deprecate their own -moz version. Eventually they remove it.

The goal statement is that a page written using Firefox as the development browser will look the same for Chrome, IE and so on.

-moz defeats that purpose because it's browser-specific.

On the "threatening legal action against open source projects" thing, you wouldn't believe the number of times people have threatened to sue Wikipedia or individual admins because the spam article about them or their business was deleted.

Here's an example I blogged about a while back: http://blog.tommorris.org/post/6898909918/quoted-for-hilario...

Reminds me of this: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=50696

Minus the extortion of course.

It looks like he was happy with the ending and did take peoples comments in to consideration. Not sure he understood the sed instruction being thrown at him though. Clearly not everyone understands temporary postfixes.

It's funny that someone so enlightened as he is unaware of a suitable find and replace all in whatever tool he is using. Also, that had to be the most god awful webpage I have seen since geocities shuttered.

This is almost certainly a troll. Pretty well done, too.

If it is, it is God-level, 10/10, serious long-term trolling executed masterfully. The domain has been around since 99 and the site has looked like... that... since at least 2001 according to the Wayback Machine.

So I doubt it. I'd love to believe it, but I doubt it.

The first mistake: Thinking a software group you aren't paying money, owes you anything...

But his hourly rate is $237 an hour!

Bloody hilarious

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