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Mozilla Updates Firefox To Appease FarmVille Users
CWmike writes "Just three days after adding plug-in crash protection to Firefox, Mozilla rushed out another release because people playing FarmVille on Facebook complained that their browser was shutting down the game. Although complaints about Firefox's quick killing of hung plug-ins were not limited to FarmVille, that game was the squeaky wheel that got the update grease. 'A lot of people play FarmVille. To ignore those people for any length of time could have a significant effect on Firefox's share of browser users,' said Firefox user Jeff Rivett on Bugzilla Sunday. 'The problem already existed, but the perceived impact suddenly changed, giving it a much higher priority.'"
That Firefox users were smarter internet users.
No, see a couple of years ago the smarter internet users started installing Firefox for their computer-illiterate friends and family to get them away from IE.
THOSE are the type of people that play FarmVille.
You can adjust the time, but it's in an obscure about:config setting, like many of Firefox's advanced settings.
I think terminating the plugin automatically is the wrong choice. If JavaScript takes too long, they don't terminate it, but instead ask the user if they want to keep running or terminate. One has to wonder why they give more leeway to applications written in JavaScript than applications written in ActionScript, seeing as how either one is just as capable of hanging your browser.
Notably, Chrome gives you the same popup dialog for both JS applications and plugins. My guess is Firefox devs are more anti-Flash, and don't mind killing it, and only relented when they realized how many of their userbase they might lose when they start interfering with people's Farmville addictions.
sig? uhh, umm, ok
See also this Good Samaritan Cartoon:
Guy in street, prone man at his feet:
"Oh, Great, as if I have the time or inclination to help a dying homeless man"
Same guy in front of computer:
" What's this?!! Sally needs a bag of fertilizer for her FarmVille Farm? I better get right on it."
He is right.
I used to work for a large Honda Dealership, assigning loan cars for people while theirs is serviced. While their car is bought around from parking I learned that some played Farmville. Others were in no mood for chat. I have seen grown(mainly women) scream like lunatics while they wait an extra 10 minutes till a car is sorted. One time when one didnt have cup holders, she threw the keys on the ground(complete with disabler alarm built in), and smashed them with her heel.
This is the farmville demographic.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
It picks some arbitrary value because the browser is not psychic. It can't tell the difference between a plugin which is dead and one which is unresponsive. So it picks some reasonable value and assumes that once the plugin passes over that line that its dead. Unfortunately things like low memory, swap, CPU consumption elsewhere could mean the plugin takes longer to respond than normal and gets clobbered.
Funnily enough Firefox finds itself in the same pickle that OLE2 used to have on Windows. In OLE2 you can embed an object running from one process into a window of another process. Works well enough except for times when the object server goes dead and the host is trying to do a window resize or whatnot. The host can't resize because commands to the object are timing out. MFC used to install a message filter for this situation which kicked in too fast when the embedded object became unresponsive leading to a meaningless Cancel / Retry message appearing. Firefox has discovered its own version of the same issue.
Yep, she says after a hard day of selling vacation packages (if you fill out the card at one of those booths to win a Mini Cooper, and a nice gal with a southern drawl calls to ask if you would like a vacation to Branson BE NICE, it is just her job) planting veggies for a couple of hours relaxes her. I even gave her one of my old spares so when/if something goes wrong with hers she can use the spare until she can come down for the weekend so I can fix her main rig.
I can't really bitch about those social sites though, as I met my sweetie on one. I got tired of all the drama queens I was meeting locally so a friend talked me into trying Tagged, and after about a month of swing and a miss I met my baby, and we have been together nearly two years now. She lives about 250 miles round trip, so she comes down one weekend and I go up the next. No jealousy, no cheating, no drama. She is like a breath of fresh air compared to the nutjobs I usually end up with.
So if the worst I have to deal with is her needing to play her FB games several times a week I can live with that. I replaced her mobo with one from an old gaming rig I had lying around, loaded it and the old spare with RAM and a couple of old Geforce cards, and she is a happy little camper. I have found with those FB games there is no such thing as too much RAM, and a discrete GPU really helps. I put a 6xxx series with 512Mb of RAM in the old spare and even though it is just a 733MHz SFF I had left from an office upgrade she says it works great for FB. Of course I used Nlite to strip XP down and make it strictly an Internet box, so that may be part of the reason why it works well.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'd suggest also to look into spore, even if I've not evidence for claiming that it's a girlie game.
but girls can be educated. my mom is a computer illiterate, played all kind of mission of caesar III, ramped up all the micromanagement way to patrician III and settled down to strategy games. she's now complaining that all the total wars after rome are too much easy, even with the ugly cheating they do to masquerade the lame ai
she would play europe universalis but the interface sucks too much, and she's too slow to enjoy rts. I've tried to hand her civ 3, but that was beaten in a week and labelled illogical and contrived (which it's a valid point)
I've yet to submit her civ4.... but girls that don't like girlie games exists.
and my girlfriend is a rpg addicted. insists on playing again and again old black isle titles, but doesn't have the attention span to play with something more complex like morriwind (open world confuses her, she wants to have a goal and play a tunnel like story as in fable with a clear direction and enemy at all the time)
You're welcome! I swear that game used to draw in so many females my former boss bought a case of the game, and then had me install it on every PC. I was like "WTF Doug? AoE 1? Two is out already!" and he just put a couple of PCs running the game in the windows and said "Watch and learn kid" and sure enough, it wasn't 20 minutes before girls started walking into the store going "Age of Empires? I looove that game!". We really increased sales to women by offering that game free with any PC purchase.
I think it is because unlike most games you never have to fight to succeed in AoE1. There are several ways to win without violence, such as building a monument, or a strategy I watched played many times by my sister I call the "Priests o' doom" where you build large walls around your camp and then send priests out to convert the enemy. With a large enough priest brigade one can take over entire villages without firing a shot.
But if you like long games with several ways to play give it a shot. I'm sure with the expansion packs you can get it for a little of nothing on Amazon, and with its random level generator you'll never play the same game twice. You might also want to try Good old games for tons of great strategy and other games, all under $10. For RPG I would suggest Divine Divinity or Sacred Gold (both great and looooong) and for strategy/rpg try King's Bounty: The Legend. By concentrating on magix you can kick butt on the above games without resorting to violence, and KB:The Legend even has your play affected by which woman you choose as a wife later in the game (don't choose the frog princess, she is seriously whiny!). All of the above are quite fun for both sexes IMHO. Enjoy!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
No, they're true because women and men are physically different and have different hormonal make-ups. You pump a woman full of enough testosterone and she would probably love Call of Duty. You cut a guy's balls off and pump him full of estrogen, and he'll probably want to go shopping. Society may give aggressive and empathic behavior a certain context, but the differences have a very real physical underpinning. I know because I had a sister who thought the same as you do--until she had kids. She tried teaching her boys to play with dolls--instead they made guns out of sticks and played war behind her back.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
My wife stopped playing Facebook games (thank FSM) after her brother got her hooked on WoW. I'm not sure it's much of an improvement... now instead of logging in twice a day to farm, she logs in each day to make her epic gem.
At least we get to Level/Raid together now.