M7 and Animation Contest NewsSunday June 20th, 1999We have a bit of news regarding Milestone 7 and the Animation Contest, and since they're related, I decided to post them together in the same news item. First, Milestone 7 is just around the corner. Tekhir writes, "The tree for M7 has been closed and the first nightly build for M8 has appeared on the Mozilla server." Due to some problems that apprunner was having with the previous default home page, they decided to make mozillaZine.org the default page for Milestone 7. You may have noticed this if you picked up a nightly build over the past few days. You may have also noticed that I have halved the # of articles that display on the front page. This is to help alleviate any bandwidth issues that might occur when Milestone 7 is released. How does this affect the Animation Contest? Well, the contest's vote page will contain 16 animated GIFs. If the vote comes during M7's release, it could cause serious bandwidth problems. So, to calm the flow a little bit I've decided to hold off the vote until a day or two after Milestone 7's release. This should occur in the next few days, so we're hoping to get the vote started by the end of the week. With every new Milestone it becomes more and more clear why Mozilla is going to kick Mickro$oft's ass. But we all knew that anyway. Question? Since there are only 16 entries, does that mean that everyone that entered will get a tshirt because there aren't 20 entries? Yep. All entrants will get a t-shirt. Yey. What logo did the t-shirt have on it again? ...and four left over! Man, I should have thrown together some POS gif and submitted it; I really liked that shirt design. Is there anywhere I can *buy* one? Or maybe you could give me one just 'cuz I begged so pathetically: Please please PLEEEEAAAZZZZZE! Oh, well. Worth a try, eh? How long is the voting going to last for? A week? Two? Just wondering. The T-Shirts have this image on them: http://www.mozillazine.org/image/nsmail82.jpg They were from the first year anniversary party, thus "party member". I believe at this point that the voting will last a week. That's what I'm leaning towards. The logo looks like it has more to do with communism than with Mozilla, with the red flag, and the row of identical and defiant followers.... And the dragon logo, which looks violent. No offence or anything.... You guys crack me up. The shirt design is cool, but the communist overtones are a bit too strong. Oh well, it'll give people something to wonder about. If you are into the look of the logo, check out the other work by the artist: http://www.obeygiant.com The communist overtones, I assume, are quite intentional. Though the green looks a little out of place. You see, it turns out the artist is my friend's ex-roomate's friend. small world, huh? "The Giant sticker seems mostly to be embraced by those who are (or at least want to seem to be) rebellious. Even though these people may not know the meaning of the sticker, they enjoy its slightly disruptive underground quality and wish to contribute to the furthering of its humorous and absurd presence which seems to somehow be anti-establishment/societal convention." The artist's work perfectly matches the (public) personality of jwz. Sorry, what's wrong with communism? You guys seem to have an extreme distaste for a political opinion similar to OSS. Communism isn't evil, it's the people who use it's ideal for wrongful purposes who are. You know, Microsoft may say OSS is great sometime. We'll know they're being tokenistic bastards. Same diff. Will the animations remained archived? I'm about to leave the country and be with out web access for two weeks, and I was kinda hoping to see my throber "in lights" so to speak, as well as the others. Am I in luck, or am I just screwed? I don't see what's so bad about Communism. On the other hand, I don't know anything about Communism. I thought the logo could be more friendly though. Ha, bullshit! You could just tell them to make the start page something else! Pfft... M7 is not going to be downloaded by other people than power users! Duh! what kind of host are you on, anyway? the start page wont be the page with the 16 gifs. bandwidth isn't a problem. this is lame shit man. If there wasn't a problem with bandwidth, then he wouldn't be doing all the corner cutting... Obviously there is more people showing interest in it than "Power Users" If you're so desperate to look at little annimated gif's, do a search on "logo download" at your favorite search engine fresh... performing a whois query on mozillazine.org indicates they are hosted by localweb.com, aka "American data technology" For your information, every damn hosting package provides UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH. http://www.localweb.com/adti/hosting.htm Therefore, what Chris Nelson testified is SUSPECT to fault. BANDWIDTH IS NOT AN ISSUE. I'd _love_ to buy one of the remaining four T-shirts, too. Just name your price, Chris. :-) 1. I love the communist-looking image. I love it even more after seeing that it offends some people, because I'm sick of the way that America (and most of you are Americans, right?) has turned into a bunch of whiners who get offended by everything simply on principle. If the word "fuck" can show up in Linux source code, I don't see why Mozilla art has to be politically correct.. after all, third parties incorporating Moz into their apps can use their own art anyway. 2. "Fresh", shut your noise hole already. *_* 3. I'd love to buy one of those T-shirts too (if I had the cash). Chris, have you considered churning out more shirts as a little side-business, or (much less hassle) maybe getting the artist to sign away the image for public use and putting a hi-res copy of it on the site, so that people can use transfer sheets and make their own shirts? Fresh, Actually, it is suspect only because you want it to be so. Why you are even interested is beyond me. Of course bandwidth is not an issue financially - if that were the only problem, I would just pay for it. However, when I told my provider about the pending M7 release, he was concerned enough that he asked me to tell him when the release occurs so he can monitor the situation. It's quite possible that there will be no issues whatsoever - but why cause people grief when some simple planning can avoid any problems completely? And why would I compound the problem? The fact is that there are many other websites hosted on the same machine as mozillaZine, and many more are on different machines using the same pipes, and out of respect for them I don't want to bring down the server or clog up the pipe to the point where the other sites lag (or are unreachable). The fact is, I don't know what kind of bandwidth we'll use up when we get 4x the maximum hits we *ever got* (when we were Slashdotted). We're expecting - according to mozilla.org - that when M7 is released we'll get 20x our average daily hits. I *want* the increase in hits - I want people checking out mozillaZine, and I think mozilla.org does to, otherwise they wouldn't have asked if mozillazine could be the default home page. However, I don't want to cause trouble to the *many* other sites that host with my provider. Sometimes, fresh, people do things not because they have to, but because they feel a responsibility to. And if you find *that* motive suspect, well, then, there's nothing more I can say. On another note, mozillaZine had nothing to do with the creation of the shirts for mozilla.org (nor the mozilla.org art, for that matter) - that was their own project. You'll have to bring the question of printing more shirts directly with them. BigShu, Yes, the animations will be archived after the contest. We may be able to create a mechanism for actually adding a different throbber to your existing Mozilla, but I'm not sure at this point. Couldn't you just move all of the alternate throbbers over to the chromeZone and get Steve to adjust the tool. You can already specify a throbber in the Roll Your Own section. It would be cool to have that tool available in the Theme Galery (maybe a sub-section at the bottom of the page) so users could just switch out throbbers. Asa, Yep, that's what will probably happen. However, according to Dave Hyatt, the APIs for the chrome will be changing soon, and we may have to have a different mechanism for changing it. great. Thank you for responding to my non-Communist question. It seemed to get swallowed in a greater debate. No, Mozilla shouldn't be the North Korean communist browser that spies on your every action and punishes you if you go against the State. Mozilla is about freedom. ok enough of this The communism overtones do not promoting the absence of freedom, but the liberty to express oneself however one chooses--the liberty to without being hindered spread images of beliefs that bear the disapproval of the public eye, which, in this case, are manifest as red flags and mindless submissives. The question, Why would Mozilla choose to convey a feeling of rebellion? remains. Further, Against whom would the founders feel the need to rebel? Are they merely venting their disgruntled feelings--or making some surreptitous statement? Do not *promote*... stupid gerunds.... -- 1. I love the communist-looking image. I love it even more after seeing that it offends some people, because I'm sick of the way that America (and most of you are Americans, right?) has turned into a bunch of whiners who get offended by everything simply on principle. If the word "fuck" can show up in Linux source code, I don't see why Mozilla art has to be politically correct.. after all, third parties incorporating Moz into their apps can use their own art anyway. -- Damn straight, i am proud to say i am not american. I think the flag looks more like a nazi flag i got the impression when i first saw it as a nazi/communist type flag I don't know what you guys thought. "i first saw it as a nazi/communist type flag" can you tell me what a nazi communist is. if you can i'll hazard the guess as to what a nazi communist flag might look like I'm not sure why you would want to associate with a political philosophy which has led to prosecution for thoughtcrimes, to state-backed monopolies, mass murder, and other evils, just because it's "different." Nazism is different, torturing small animals is different and shocking. Whatever. Being different just to be different is just as stupid as conforming just to conform. Do something out of real principles, and I might have some respect. Solidarnosc! If one was really determined, one could blow up that jpeg of the image, use photoshop to take out the quality kinks (its a rather simple image) print it or put it on a floppy disk, and take it to a screen printer. I'm not sure how much some of these places charge for one-offs.. Not only do I love the design, I love the idea of having one. Its like having a crew t-shirt for a film *_* one should watch claims of "UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH"... places like simplenet claim that sort of thing, but nothing is really free. If your site puts too much load on the SP's server, they'll bump you. "I'm not sure how much some of these places charge for one-offs.. " My experience with screen printers is, unless you go 100+ with a 4-colour print like that (either red-green-yellow-black on a light/white shirt, or red-gren-yellow with a white backer behind to make the colours pop on a dark/black shirt) your looking a $10-15+ per shirt. If you go with just one, you might even be up in the $50-$60 range. You could bring it to one of those places that prints from a photo, but it would have to be on a white shirt, and the quality is kinda crappy. As per the "communist/nazi" feel. The Nazi very carefully crafted their image to resemble a socialist government (they were voted in as a Socialist party actually). And communism "in theory" doesn't have to exclude democracy; many European countries have a blend of socialist/democratic systems. (heck Canada is practically a sociallist country too). The hard core Communist countries (Frmr. USSR, China, Cuba, etc.) are following the Marxist/Lenninist ideal that there must be a violent overthrow, and a "temporary" totalitarian state, before the people "realize" that communism is just plain better (I personally never trust government systems that needed to wait for the consituents to realize that its better). As for if it fits Mozilla. Darn right it does. It is very revolutionary to be building a commercially viable app (especially one that ranks up with word-proccessors on the "must-have" scale) in an open-source method. Bringing what was once exclusionary, and private to the masses, (so to speak). Like any revolution, it does have its bumps (JWZ's resignation, sparked by the lack of an official release after a year, for one) but this one seems to be working quite nicely. (P.S. I am Canadian, so don't flame me about the Socialist crack-- and yes, I know Kline and Harris are doing their darndest to turn things around anyways) M7 and Animation Contest turned Stupid Political System Discussion. Now folks we've seen just about everything. --K3 tHIS CRACKS ME UP K3 IS RIGHT I NEVER EXPECTED THIS TO TURN INTO A POLITICAL DISCUSSION BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? IM GLAD IT DID. I STILL SAY THAT SHIRT HAS A COMMUNIST OR NAZI ATTITUDE AND IM WONDERING IF THE PERSON WHO CREATED THE GRAPHIC IS EITHER ANTI-SEMETIC OR HAS A COMMUNIST/NAZI MENTALITY OR LIKING? truly an amazing thread, as k3 points out. and he didn't even mention the t-shirt how to's and site hosting details! so, i had to go see the evil logo for myself, and i have to admit, it's pretty hilarious. please allow me to indulge in some interpretation here: did someone ask/suggest that there might be some "communist overtones" and that they might be "strong"? um, is there *anything* in the design that *isn't* communist poster art?! hello? well, actually (and importantly!) yes, of course there is. one thing and one thing only...the absurdly grinning reptile. so...it seems like a lot of things could be going on here, all at the same time, and all pretty funny. ok, party member...i.e., attendee of the first year anniversary party, as mozineAdmin pointed out above. but this is very clever: this amusing aspect of "party member" is very context specific. if you don't know about the mozilla bash, you think of a monolithic state political group...so geek bash vs. stodgy politicos, all in the same phrase. but of course there's more...who's the party? at one level, of course, the party (as represented by the heroic/mindless characters on the logo) and its flag are microsoft/cathedral/proprietary/business world. the grinning zilla peeking through the star is the new power to be, the mozilla/bazaar/open-source/hacker world. that is certainly a central myth (in the good sense of the word) for most of computerdom. but of course that would conflict with the fact that the t-shirt wearer is a "party member." (or would it? is the logo accusing the wearer or the looker?) or would it? jwz's comments ominously suggest that netscape(/aol?) has become something reminiscent of a bloated communist state agency. is the logo supposed to make mozilla workers/party attenders nervous? forcing them to ask themselves: "have we become functionaries in a bloated and decrepit organization?" in this case, the star with the grinning lizard is the north star, the guiding point…the revolutionary absurdity that mozilla is supposed to aim for. so mozilla will be a revolution. revolutions require and create heroes. communist poster art (and other war-poster art) were/are designed to inspire heroism and personal sacrifice. the coder as the new cultural hero. the geek hero. hurrah! capitalism never inspired anyone to do anything other than make money for her/himself. communism at least purported to ask more in hopes of achieving more. for those who have never lived under communism, communist art will always look like the art of calling for more, for revolting against the idiocies and atrocities and inequities http://www.inequality.org/ that emerge from capitalism. how sadly ironic that the revolution institutionalized itself and turned itself into a different flavor of that which it revolted against. this is the sad irony of the socialist-realist aesthetic for those of us in the west, it simultaneously reminds us of the need for revolt and of the 20 million killed under stalin. 20 million killed. can any of us even *begin* to wrap our heads around that? anything that adopts this aesthetic cannot escape that irony. revolution begets bureaucracy which begets revolt and so on and so on. you are offended by this logo? which of the millions of possible readings offends you? come on, puhlease. ...oh... it looks like m7 finally finished downloading! whoopee. i didn't know mozilla was really usable by non-coders until i stumbled into mozillaZine. i can't wait to try it! i would love to get a hold of one of those t-shirts, too, damn! furthermore, were there t-shirts from the first party? i loved the logo on the web-page invite to that bash. i found out about the mozilla project on the day of that party, and there was nothing more in the world that i wanted at that moment than to be there. the mozilla site directed me to "the cathedral and the bazaar" http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ and nothing's really been the same since. i'm an open-source newbie and i can't get enough. i'm embarking on python and thinking web applications in zope http://www.zope.org . wish me luck. and for those in this thread asking "what is communism?", here is a handy site: "the world socialist website" http://www.wsws.org/ . just so you don't think i'm a true believer: i discovered it when i was following python and xml links, and i stopped by "scripting news" (jun 18th listing) http://news.userland.com/1999/06/18/ , which led me to wired's article about "the worker's web" http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/20292.html . some of the stuff at the ws website is a little too canned for my taste, but some of it provides a really good counterspin to the stuff we hear most of the time. to the designer of the shirt logo...good luck and thanks. i hope you eventually see my interpretation of your logo. i have no idea whether anything i said has any connection to what you were thinking when you made it, but hey... ;) fractalyze
What the hell are you saying and what the hell do you believe? |