Some will say that it’s necessary to balance privacy against security, and that it’s important to find the right compromise between the two. Even if you believe that, a good negotiator doesn’t begin a conversation with someone whose position is at the exact opposite extreme by leading with concessions.
And that’s exactly what we’re dealing with. Not a balance of forces which are looking for the perfect compromise between security and privacy, but an enormous steam roller built out of careers and billions in revenue from surveillance contracts and technology. To negotiate with that, we can’t lead with concessions, but rather with all the opposition we can muster.
> How can open source software be in competition with anything?
Market share is power. Popular open-source projects can, and do, shape the industry. If you believe your trajectory is the right one for the industry, competition matters a lot.
As an example, Mozilla's Firefox was created to compete with Internet Explorer. It succeeded, and now Mozilla is working to defend the open web, so market share is still crucial for Mozilla even today.
I'm sorry but you're incorrect. Mozilla's Firefox was originally called Phoenix, and it was created because Mozilla the browser was a dog-slow encumbered monstrosity of Netscape's attempt to create an all-in-one solution for the web. Firefox was essentially competing with Mozilla Suite, but it wasn't so much "competing" as filling a necessary role: a browser that didn't suck.
Mozilla Suite was also not created to compete with Internet Explorer. In fact, Internet Explorer was created to compete with Netscape, which was the dominant browser for years until IE finally knocked it off its catbird seat. It never recovered because IE offered a simple, fast browsing experience, even if it sucked dick at actually rendering content.
In this vein, Phoenix was created in the model of Internet Explorer. So in a way you could say it competed, but in actual fact it was competing against its own progenitor.
Reflecting more on 'competition': the browser wars nearly destroyed the web as we know it as each browser introduced incompatible proprietary extensions which were then picked up (badly) by each other over time. The lack of standards, or good implementations of standards, severely hampered the adoption of more advanced technology. Firefox continues that tradition today by pushing more and more features that IE can't support; we're just lucky that Firefox is the dominant browser now, and that people are now used to upgrading their browser virtually every week.
It always makes me chuckle that Firefox adds more and more features and becomes more and more like the suite they replaced; I still miss the Composer for web pages!
I stand corrected, then. I definitely agree that by 2004 there was a huge effort to get as many people to the browser as possible, even comparing it as a better browser than IE. Still, it's interesting that IE was only ever mentioned two years after the initial release, and everyone who talked about the goals of the project were talking about the bloat of Mozilla and having a better user experience. I imagine it would have ended up much worse if the focus was competition alone.
The snark wasn't necessary indeed, and as an early-stage project, lacking documentation is understandable.
As an HN post however, if you tease us with "magical features" in the title, I'd expect to have the magic shown to me in the linked page, or at the very least in the top comment. I shouldn't have to grok the sources to figure it out.
Thanks, i already noticed the age of the project :). The ""complaint"" is obviously valid, i'd add at least half a page of examples to explain what it does and how to try it, just to increase the chance of contribution.
No snarkiness was intended... but looks like it came out that way.
I didn't take your use of “documentation” to be so loose, but I agree that it should have an explanation for the use of “magical” in the title. The author has since added an explanation.
Main arguments are a matter of interpretation, so your second sentence opposes, rather than supporting, the first.
Summarizing is interpretation, since it is relaying the important points of the source, and determining what is important is a matter of interpretation.
Nope. Selecting which main argument to repeat is a matter of interpretation. But once you've selected it, repeating it requires little interpretation. Adding your own commentary requires interpretation in both selection and writing.
We might have different definitions of the word "interpret". According to Google, interpret: 1) explain the meaning of (information, words, or actions). 2) understand (an action, mood, or way of behaving) as having a particular meaning or significance.
Writing bad articles is a great way to move toward writing good articles.
Writing in the public view is a great way to get feedback on your writing and the subjects you discuss—e.g. corrections, further education, etc. For some people, it also increase the pressure to improve.
Vanity is only one possible reason for writing in the public view, and it's an exercise with large potential gains. Your perspective is entirely off, and you've decided to take an opportunity to attack someone who was either brave enough or indifferent enough to risk being attacked in the first place.
That's a good reason to downvote or stop reading, but I question whether attacking the author for having the audacity to publish the post is a good move.
It's a single file. It works with or without the ruby-dependent parallel plugin installations and upgrades. It allows for plugins to be loaded only when they're needed (e.g. only for JS files). That's minimalist.
And that’s exactly what we’re dealing with. Not a balance of forces which are looking for the perfect compromise between security and privacy, but an enormous steam roller built out of careers and billions in revenue from surveillance contracts and technology. To negotiate with that, we can’t lead with concessions, but rather with all the opposition we can muster.
http://thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have-something-to...