atopal

Not sure what you are talking about. The SLS is in active development at the moment. An unmanned Orion capsule is planned to orbit the moon in November 2018, followed by manned missions 3 years after that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System

Well, they don't actually follow streets. Looks like it's just the shortest distance between two stops, even if that goes right through a building or over water.

Works surprisingly well though, I only realized after a while.

I don't agree with that statement, but I don't even understand how it would apply to Apple. Apple spent $6 billion on R&D in 2014 [1] and that number has been increasing almost exponentially for years [2].

[1] http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-spent-6-billion-rd-nearly-100-p...

[2] http://www.engadget.com/2014/02/12/a-look-at-apples-randd-ex...

Throwing more money at something doesn't necessarily lead to a better outcome. Nokia was outspending Apple 9 times on R&D[1] and it didn't help them at all.

[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/05/14/nokia-outspent-a...

From https://wiki.mozilla.org/Addons/Extension_Signing

"What are my options if I want to install unsigned extensions in Firefox?

The Developer Edition and Nightly versions of Firefox will have a setting to disable signature checks. There will also be special unbranded versions of Release and Beta that will have this setting, so that add-on developers can work on their add-ons without having to sign every build."

Did you not read the blog post? You can use the dev edition or the special release and beta version that don't have this limitation. Nobody is forcing you to live with this limitation. If this was done as an about:config flag it could easily be changed by an add-on too.

> I use several small add-ons I wrote myself. Why should I have to get Mozilla's approval before I can install my own damn add-ons?

Mozilla has to balance the needs of several hundred million users, who are being attacked by malware every day, with the needs of people who write their own add-ons. Is it really that difficult to see it from that perspective? And it's not like you have no options now. You can either use the developer edition or the special release version where this feature is disabled.

Those approval ratings you speak of are usually reported as a part of representative studies. What do you think is the approval rating of Obama, if you only ask people who support Jeb Bush's campaign?

Input is anything but representative, it's not meant to be. It's there to catch things as early as possible.

> Ad-blockers have finally reached a point that the financiers of the major browsers are setting the groundwork for tightening the screws on them.

You speak with such confidence about things you obviously have no idea about. This change is driven by the massive amount of malware that threatens users of all browser with a sufficiently strong add-on API.

Can you please point me to any evidence that would suggest that this change was made even just in parts at the request of Yahoo?

Also, Firefox is free software, the only thing that belongs to Mozilla is the name. If it ever became difficult to block ads with Firefox, that brand would lose its value pretty quickly and somebody else would offer Firefox+adblocking under a different name.

Sorry, but mildly put, your definition of opt-in seems to be an unrealistic one. If you think Mozilla should ask whether people want to have a change or not for every single change, then that's your prerogative, it has nothing to do with practical software development though.

Firefox Hello is opt-in. If you don't use it, it will just be a button in your toolbar, it will do absolutely nothing before you opt-in, by making a call.

As a bonus: You can make video calls without ever having to create an account.

Pet peeve of mine: It's actually the "Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences" or "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel".

From the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econom...

"It is not one of the prizes that Alfred Nobel established in his will in 1895, but instead was established 73 years later by a donation to the foundation from Sweden's central bank, the Sveriges Riksbank, on the bank's 300th anniversary."

From the criticism section:

In his speech at the 1974 Nobel Prize banquet Friedrich Hayek stated that had he been consulted on the establishment of a Nobel Prize in economics, he would "have decidedly advised against it" primarily because, "The Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess.... This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence. But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally."

Less important, but relevant note about the name: "Some critics argue that the prestige of the Prize in Economics derives in part from its association with the Nobel Prizes, an association that has often been a source of controversy. Among them is the Swedish human rights lawyer Peter Nobel, a great-grandson of Ludvig Nobel.[28] Nobel criticizes the awarding institution of misusing his family's name, and states that no member of the Nobel family has ever had the intention of establishing a prize in economics."

careful, if you don't pay for it, you are the product.

That would probably be counted as a random choice and as the rules state: > if the Predictor predicts that the player will choose randomly, then box B will contain nothing.

I believe you just described the ScrumMaster and the Product Owner in the SCRUM methodology: https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/core-scrum-values-ro...

What is broken in Firefox? Looks pretty much the same as in Chrome. Firefox 37 on Mac OS that is.

Since that study is never properly referenced, here you go:

B.J. Fogg & C. Nass (1997) Silicon Sycophants: The Effects of Computers that Flatter. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 46(5), pp 551–561.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581996...

And yes, that 10 page paper costs $36. Thank you, Elsevier.

Well, Mozilla doesn't actually build or sell any phones. Mozilla just provides the OS. Since Intex is no charity, you should assume that they are still making a profit at $33.

No, not all browsers. Here is the one for the current Firefox release:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/31.0

Maybe. But he says he started recording 10 minutes into the call, and that he and his wife (who started the call) were answering the rep's questions, but not getting anywhere.

This is a great example for how setting goals can do more harm than good. If you start measuring people, they'll optimize for what you are measuring.

Yes, indeed, with certain limitations, but it's quite common to order things online and send them back within two weeks – if you change your mind – usually without any penalties.

I have no idea what other capabilities you are talking about. This is about DRM. What Firefox features would web sites use instead of DRM?

To your second point: If you install IE or Chrome the DRM system will be part of your browser and you have something out of your control running on your system whether you want to watch DRMed content or not.

With Firefox you can just keep using the web, and as long as you never want to watch any DRMed content, nothing changes for you. Only if you want to watch DRMed content will you be asked to download a plugin. As the cherry on top, Firefox will not leak identfiable data about your video usage to DRM or content providers.

Unfortunately Mozilla alone can't stand against the power of Google, Apple, Mircrosoft, Amazon, Netflix and others united in their desire to push DRM through, but if you can't see the difference between Mozilla and the others, I don't think there is anything I can say to change your mind.

Definition of brag [1]: 1. a pompous or boastful statement 2. arrogant talk or manner: cockiness

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brag

It seems like you are describing an oxymoron. It's not possible to create a browser that both supports plugins, but disables DRM. Plug-ins (assuming you are referring to the NPAPI) by definition can do anything they want, and in fact are used today to implement DRM in the form of Silverlight and Flash (RTMPE). Think of this as an alternative <object> tag, that doesn't allow arbitrary plugins, but one very specific to encode and decode audio/video.

Fun fact, if you have used Youtube, you have probably consumed DRMed content via Flash's RTMPE support.

Are you aware that by default Firefox will not be able to display any DRMed content, and that people will be given the choice to download a plug-in to do that just as they are given the choice to install the Flash plugin today? Can't those users just decide not to download the closed source plugin to view the DRMed content? What's the point of switching browsers?

That is exactly the point! In this case, Mozilla does not have leverage. Users have leverage. Chrome and IE users could have decided to abandon those browsers when they implemented the DRM measures. They did not.

That is a complete misrepresentation of the situation. This is almost literally a case of "choose your poison" for Mozilla. Abstaining is no way to win. There is no way to win this for Mozilla, damned if they do, damned if they don't.

However, at least with Mozilla you get the benefit that the DRM piece is as contained as possible and you are not leaking information to the content providers. Something Mozilla fought for that neither Google nor Microsoft gave anything about.

Also, Mozilla doesn't brag about its mission. What does that even mean? That Mozilla is pointing out the difference between itself and the other players in the market? It's vital that people are aware of the fact that Mozilla is a mission driven organization. That is the reason d'etre of Firefox.

  > in the meantime Firefox and Opera relied on the promise
  > and then were forced to start implementing support once
  > they realized Google was not going to keep the promise
  > and it was hurting them and then included support(I don't
  > think Opera ever did?).

Not only that, Mozilla partnered with CISCO to make h264 usage free for all. Now, people can modify and redistribute Firefox and still retain the ability to play h264. Something that Google gave a shit about when they included h264 in Chrome, but not in Chromium.

If you are using Chrome, don't fool yourself, you are not using an open source browser, but you are helping Google further the agenda of its stakeholders, and they made it clear what their priorties are when they took the first step by implementing this on Chromebooks.

In other words: except where they have any market share at all.

Reader mode for desktop is coming (no specific version targeted though). Here is the bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=558882

And here are the mock-ups: http://people.mozilla.org/~mmaslaney/readermode/index.html