General Discussions

**witnesstheday** · 01:15 PM

Quote:

It's something of an open secret that Mozilla, the organization behind the open source Firefox Web browser, gets most of its funding from Google -- 91 percent, to be exact. The deal gives Google top placement in Firefox's search engine bar. But now that Google is also shipping Chrome, its own branded browser, some critics are asking whether the search engine giant's deep pockets have allowed it to gain too much influence over the Web browser market.
This week, Mozilla CEO John Lilly admitted that his organization's relationship with Google is "more complicated than it used to be" in light of the current funding arrangement. But Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz goes even further, claiming that because the market is controlled by just a few giant companies -- namely Google and Microsoft -- the Web browser has become "hostile territory" for application developers. Could the days of an open Web be coming to an end?

http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008...rosoft-own-web

This is the status quo of OUR industry - WE the technologists let a bunch of petty tyrants control all the territory we work in.

Application developers like me are like the bloke in that famous clapton song - spamworld email-"software"-makers to the left of us, monopolistic mega-corporations controlling browsers, search engines and operating systems to the right of us

and we're stuck in the middle with all the talent and none of the power.

What shocks me most is that all these billions of sheeplike morons who fuel and foster this contemptible system don't even understand that they are the most core part of the gigantic tapestry of ignorance that is our times. If the morons just stopped letting themselves be used to fuel the whole thing, it would all stop. They just need to say no. They can stop - if they simply use that little-touched part of their body called the brain. But will they? Is the pope tolerant of homosexuals? Is Islam the ideal religion for James Brown? Is Gordon Brown thin?

It's pretty sad, really.

**chrishirst** · 12-28-2008, 05:33 PM

Gerry Rafferty surely? (Stealers Wheel - Stuck in the middle)

**witnesstheday** · 12-28-2008, 06:09 PM

My research tells me that you are correct in this matter.

I thought I'd heard clapton singing it - but I can't find it on google or by searching on my computer or indeed youtube, so I probably just imagined that clapton had sung it at all.

Bill Bailey HAS sung eye of the tiger, however. A jolly old music-hall version of it, in fact.

**chrishirst** · 12-29-2008, 07:14 AM

I can't recall an Eric Clapton version, though Jeff Healey did a good cover of it (only video I could find

)

**witnesstheday** · 12-29-2008, 03:42 PM

nice guitar

and a whole new vid-sharing site for me to feast on. cheers

merry new year

("in this country we say HAPPY new year")

**chrishirst** · 12-29-2008, 03:54 PM

Quote:

nice guitar

And of course Jeff Buckley is the man who made the definitive cover version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah

FAR FAR better than the "cover" version by yet another talent~~less~~ show "winner"

**jv17** · 12-29-2008, 05:20 PM

well i think we are not bunch of lemmings