HN user
Everyone commenting about open source in this thread, who is not a Chromium developer, has built Chromium from source?
It's really easy, right? And it works just the same as Chrome, right?
Mozilla is open source but the complexity and volume of the code means very few people can work with it.
How many of you, who are not Mozilla developers, have modified the Firefox source and compiled a working version?
That's how nerds get controversial things accomplished without pushback. They do it while the rest of the world, which is busy with other things, isn't looking.
Yes.
I agree. However I think this is only possible because of how well the company is doing. I could be very wrong on this. Indeed I hope I am wrong.
I don't think there's any question Chrome is going to win the Second Broswer War. The question is only when we all agree it's over.
The monopoly issue seems even more troublesome this time, as compared with when Microsoft was trying to tie the browser to the desktop PC OS, because the web and search is actually Google's core business.
If I were working on Chrome I would find myself wondering, "So what happens after we become the browser that 99% of the web uses and develops for? What if ChromeOS follows a similar path? Is that going to be good for the web in the long term? What if Google's business starts to slow down? We have created a virtual strangehold over the web. We might have to use it more aggressively."
Or maybe not. All that free food. The big bonuses. The great things we achieved. In the near term, we have seriously made things better for everyone. Life's just too good to think business could ever falter. Maybe I might never have such thoughts. I'm just an engineer. I'm just doing my job. I can't worry about these things.
The amount of control one company is developing over something so essential as the web is just obscene.
So what we have to do is always find the original sources of thenextweb articles and post those instead.
There is certainly no loss in skipping over thenextweb.
This is just my opinion.
But in my experience they have proven themselves to be all but worthless time and again. It's not just plagiarism. They do not research their stories. They appear to lack any measurable insight into the subject matter. As such, they make a lousy source of news.
Best of luck with tarsnap. I would expect it will continue to grow. Is that the only startup you worked on?
Unrelated question: What do you use for communicating with EC2? Are you satifisfied with using their Java solution and the large installs for the JDK or installing scripting languages, e.g., like Python in order to use boto? Or have you written something smaller with less dependencies?
It's because you're not in Asia. And what you're seeing is probably a page geared toward B2B not B2C.
Alibaba has been around a long time. They are most definitely a legit company. And a successful one.
I was enjoying the Facebook dissenter's comment until I reached the last word. It sort of defeated whatever persuasive import he had gained up to that point.
What's interesting is the blogger feels the need to engage such a comment. And he's certainly not the only one. If it's not a fad, if the quoted comment is way off the mark, if Facebook is all the great things we are told it is, then why is he arguing against a comment like this? No need to argue with fools, right?
But is anyone really sure what the heck Facebook is? It's a web developer's wet dream is what it is. Beyond that, who knows?
The arguments will continue, as they should. The jury is still out, though some investors have already reaped hundreds of millions from curious advertisers while we're deciding. They'll have cashed out long before we come to a final decision.
My personal opinion is that human communication through the internet, including photos and video, and achieving global internet connectedness of everyone, not just nerds, is definitely not a fad. Nor is is it something new. We've all been working toward this for many years. But doing it all, even the most personal parts, through Mark Zuckerberg's website? As in the "I think I will fuck them in the ear" Mark Zuckerberg. I'm just not sure I can call this a practice that is going to continue indefinitely, as other alternatives arise. There are better ways to do this sort of internet-enabled sharing and commmunication. To think they will never be made as user-friendly as Facebook seems to be ignoring inevitable forward progress.
Historically, Facebook may stand as the first proof we had that we could all coordinate with our friends to exchange contact information and photos in one central repository. Now that we have everyone's email address, it will be easy to coordinate and move the party elsewhere when the right alternative appears.