Re: CHAT: browsers

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:
>>Well, you can get VMWare for Windows NT, so it's not opposite.
> But what's the point of it? Running Windows under Windows? ;)))
VMWare is a virtual computer, not a Windows system. You can run Linux,
FreeBSD, DOS, OPENSTEP, OS/2, Windows and many others under it.

>>So it's really cheating, isn't it? It still uses however much RAM
>>Internet Explorer uses so it isn't really the smallest browser.
>
> Since IE doesn't use that much RAM in itself, it's not much of a problem. And I
> never said it was not cheating :)) .
True, but I still don't think it counts.

>>Netscape
>>Mosaic 0.9 (a pre-release of Netscape Navigator 1.0) could fit on a
>>floppy disk; I don't think you'd ever be able to do that to IE. (I've
>>heard of another browser that advertises it can fit on a floppy, but
>>given it claims to support ActiveX controls (or whatever they are),
>>I'm
>>guessing it cheats as well.)
>>
>
> I've found quite a few browsers around at download.com.com that could largely
> fit in a floppy (actually, you could put a few of them in that floppy ;))) ).
> But I don't know how good they are.
What do you mean by 'largely fit in a floppy'? I understand that phrase
to mean that most of the browsers (taken as individuals), all the
relevant bits perhaps, could fit on the floppy.

>>Do you actually mean 50 kilobits?
>
> Nope, 50 kilo*bytes*. I thought kilobits were only ever use to evaluate
> transfer speeds and thus there was no ambiguity possible in normal use. I
> wasn't trying to be confusing here :) .
Even still, I betcha you meant kibibytes. And you could be right about
that, but you were trying to describe a browser as incredibly small, so
it was possible. (Talking of a 60 Gb hard drive, on the other hand, is
unambiguous.)

>  I don't think it's possible to write
>
>>a
>>   Windows program in that little space.
>
>
> Maybe a "Hello World" program? ;)))
I doubt even that with all the linkage and suchlike.

>  Normally I'd assume you meant
>
>>50 kibibytes (50 KiB), but you normally use o for (8-bit) bytes
>
> Well, I didn't use it for about two years now (at least when I write in
> English. It's standard "octet" in French :)) ). If I did, it was a typo :) .
You have. In fact, I think most of the times I've seen you write about
bytes you've used 'o'.

>  (which
>
>>I
>>advocate given that no-one seems to remember the difference between b
>>and B,
>
>
> True, but usually bits and bytes are used in different contexts, so the
> ambiguity that arises is usually minimum.
I'm still not a fan of ambiguity in measurements. It almost defeats the
purpose of them.

(And at this point, if you'll pardon my digression, I'll digress. In
Australia, icecream is labelled in litre and honey in grams. Icecream is
a solid object and honey is a liquid. In America, do you use fluid
ounzes for icecream and solid ounzes for honey? My parents can't
remember what happened in Australia before the convesion.)

>  any more than m and M
>
> That's a bigger fault.
Again, context mostly sorts it out, at least for consumers. Obviously
there are times when you'll need to get it right, but I don't think
anyone's going to assume a bridge has a maximum clearence of 3 molar (a
measurement of dilution (moles per litre or something like that), has
the symbol of M, reminds me of our year 11 chemistry exam, one of the
multi-choice questions being 'what is the symbol for megamolar?', the
options being mM, Mm, MM and mm). Oh, and that's another nastiness.
Mega-, milli-, metre and molar shouldn't all have the same symbol, even
if they're distinguished by position and by capitalisation, as long as
there are symbols like mol that are three (lower-case) letters long.
(Now then Tristan, stop giving the Americans ideas about why the
*shouldn't* convert.)

> > The
>>metric system might be brilliantly simple to use, but whoever decided
>>how to write it has a lot to answer for).
>
> Well, that's just because people don't seem to pay attention in your parts of
> the world. Here I've never seen anyone writing M for m for instance. Only in
> the computer world I can see sometimes the wrong capitalisation, but then if
> you manage to get a mb of something warn me! (even a mB would be difficult to
> get! ;)) )
I don't think it matters whether or not people pay attention, it's still
nasty making capitalisation the only difference in meaning. (And no, I'm
no more happy with Polish vs polish than I am with MM vs mm.)

Tristan.

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