Deus Ex: Invisible War was (by far) the biggest thing that went wrong in 2004. The only reason it didn't make this list was because GamePro (and most of the other critics) gave it ridiculously positive reviews.
All the "video games are bad" items torn from the pages of mainstream newspapers should never have made it to this list. When damn near everyone plays or has a friend who plays video games the journalists and politicians behind these stories are pissing in the wind (and most of them know it).
You can remove Media Player with XPLite, but if you do Windows acts like the MS video codecs aren't there -- even if you install the stand-alone codec package.
The mozilla preferences dialog is just that, a giant, unsorted pile.
You must be using some new definition of the word "unsorted" that I am unfamiliar with. The only thing in the Moz prefs dialog that comes close to being unorganized is the "Advanced" section. This means that (at most) you only need to look at the categories under that section and one other to find the prefs you're looking for.
about:config is not meant to be used as a preferences dialog, it's meant to be used for those freaks who want to tinker with low-level-options that have no right being in a user-friendly Options dialog.
I do not agree with you on what qualifies as "low level options". Options that have been included in web browser preferences windows for many years should not be relegated to about:config simply because the FF devs cannot be bothered to construct a dialog that is both "intuitive" for newbs and "feature complete" for everyone else.
So you were talking about a Skin, I see. Frankly, I find this reasoning pretty baseless.
I was mostly referring to the skin, but its really more of a combination -- the skin and the way the interface works. Perhaps you could appreciate this reasoning if you had to support/transition several thousand NS4 users by yourself.
There is a Firefox Extension to give you the full Mozilla-style preferences dialog.
Link?
The idea of the reduced options is a very good one. Nobody wants to hunt through thousands of options, just to change the font... Just as you consider about:config cluttered, so too is the Mozilla preferences dialog to anyone who is accustomed to another browser.
I disagree. Finding things in the Mozilla preferences dialog is quite simple -- especially for the commonly used things (font options are under "Appearance" then "Fonts"). Indiscriminantly hiding vast swathes of preferences in a giant unsorted pile (about:config or GNOME's windows-registry-like interface) is a cute way to be able to dodge the "it's not in there!" complaints, but AFAIC this is just lazy interface design.
I fail to see how. Moz differs greatly from Netscape 4, and the differences between Moz and Firefox are relatively small.
Obviously they are quite similar. I'm sure you can download a skin like this for FF, however Mozilla looks this way out of the box. Mozilla also detects and imports bookmarks and mail from NS4 with a single click on installation.
Last I checked FF had an extremely abbreviated preferences window with the rest of the options available through an enormous about: page. I like Mozilla's prefs interface better.
Moz is also a great drop-in replacement for people who are used to NS 4.x (a population that includes many of the users I support).
A person can play that $30 game "The Sims" for the rest of their life then pass it on to future generations. The entire computer game industry could implode and Joe Bob IV could still play his great great great great great grand-dad's copy of "The Sims".
This "Entropia" game is only playable for as long as the company running the server desires it. Even if they don't go out of business; Five or ten years from now they're going to come out with "Entropia II" (or whatever) and have no interest in continuing to support a game that can't keep or attract subscribers because of its "old fashioned" graphics and gameplay.
Twelve inches per foot Two pints in a quart Why don't we make it easy? The English system of measurement must be layed to history We can use units of ten and convert with ease Like all the other countries I am in command Yes, I am taking a stand From this disease we must be free Good God!
You're drunk with your tradition That has no validity Well, I'm intoxicated in support of metrics Come drink a decaliter with me We want metrics We want it now We know we can win I weigh 170 pounds That's 90 kilograms So metrics can even make you thin
(Yardsticks are pathetic)
All cool things are in metrics For example, here's just one I've got my nine Well, that's nine millimeters Sounds cooler than my point point-two-seventy inches gun The permanent-if-nonexistent "they" will call me communist They'll call me scum But it's worth it Canadians will think we're smart At least they'll think we are not as dumb
You're drunk with your tradition That has no validity Well, I'm intoxicated in support of metrics Come drink a decaliter with me We want metrics We want it now We know we can win I weigh 170 pounds That's 90 kilograms See, metrics can even make you thin
The revolution's here We must overcome at last As we symbolically stick their fucking foot up their fucking ass Guitar!
You are drunk with your tradition That has no validity Well, I'm intoxicated in support of metrics Come drink a decaliter with me We want metrics We want it now We know we can win I weigh 170 pounds That's 90 kilograms See, metric can even make me thin!
Others, particularly after the game became popular and the 2nd Ed. books came out, chose to stick to the rule books as if they were some kind of bible.
Gygax started making noise about people deviating from the rules quite a while before 2nd Ed. He even went so far as to claim that anyone who modified the rules at all was no longer playing Dungeons & Dragons. I can't find the exact cite, but I think this paragraph from A Brief History of Roleplaying Games hints at what I'm talking about:
[In 1974] the combination of rules scarcity and individual creativity resulted in many campaigns being very different from what Arneson and Gygax may have intended. Some players, such as Steve Marsh, got into contact with Gygax and the TSR staff, and endeavored to get clarifications. To the extent they were able, Gygax and Arneson offered their opinions. Ultimately, however, games and campaigns developed that were as idiosyncratic as the players and referees themselves. A brisk business was done on convention panels trying to resolve this or that aspect of the rules, but the cat was out of the bag. Had TSR had the position of respectability of Wargames Research Group in Great Britain, it might have been able to issue definitive rulings about How to Play. But this was not to be, at least initially, and it seems from articles and opinions printed at the time that this question vexed Gygax severely. He would attempt to revisit it later, with the development of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D).
I proclaim "erototoxin" officially worse than "killographic".
A gaming web site called "National Killographic" would be sweet, but I can't see anyone wanting to sign up for a porn site involving the word "erototoxin"....well...maybe a few people...
"ILM was then housed in an old warehouse in an industrial area of Van Nuys (on or near Kester St, as I recall). By coincidence, Van Nuys was where I grew up, so I knew the area well."
-- Alan Dean Foster, Some interview
"In fact, Apogee was none other than the original shop set up for Industrial Light and Magic in Van Nuys, California, by George Lucas in 1975."
-- Some site on model building
"At this point, John Dykstra got a call from Glen Larson. Glen had contacted either George Lucas or Gary Kurtz to find out if he and Universal could lease the ILM Van Nuys facility we had used to create the VFX for Star Wars, in order to shoot Battlestar Galactica."
-- Some site with an ad that wants to install an IE plug-in
"Lucas hired effects expert John Dykstra to head a new production facility, located in old warehouses in Van Nuys, California. After completing Star Wars he relocated ILM to the Bay Area."
-- Some.edu site about the history of CG
That's just a few picks from the first page of Google results, too.
At first I thought it was a rendering of the office from Glengarry Glen Ross, but then I saw the printer.
If you made the room longer, re-arranged the furniture, put some shelving under the windows and a coffee maker in the back it would be just about perfect, though...
If someone has physical access to the computer then it might as well be that easy. Bypassing the XP login screen may be a bit more obscure but it still only keeps honest people honest.
On the other hand, how many remote exploits are there for 98SE without IE, Outlook or a Media Player newer than 6.x on it?
Web Developer seems to lack several Prefbar features including navigation buttons, proxy menu, user agent spoofing, pop-up toggle, clear history, pipelining toggle and clear location bar.
Our Windows player contains no spyware and never has.
Of course it didn't contain spyware; It was spyware! As the Anonymous Coward above points out: Real just about invented spyware-as-product. I haven't used RealPlayer Windows in many years however I will bet you any amount of money that even today it is not reasonably possible to open the fucking thing without hitting an IP address owned by Real Networks or one of its affiliates/sponsors.
RealPlayer Windows is "not spyware" the same way that the "v1agr@" ad in my inbox is "n0t sp@m": Term redefinition.
Don't take that crap from this loser. Tabs make multiple browser windows only slightly more useful than an appendix or a prehensile tail. Sure, if you're doing some major research you may want to sort the tabbed sites into different windows, but for ordinary day-to-day tasks one window is the perfect number.
When you're dealing with a window (like a browser) that is going to take up nearly all of the screen no matter what is being displayed, why would you want to spend a lot of time playing with window resizing, positioning and shuffling?
In his dribble about browsers the author even mentions sites that open in new windows as if that's a good thing! Doesn't he realize that experts and novices alike hate that almost as much as pop-up ads?
Ray Bradbury has shed light on the situation that resulted in Renny Harlin departing from the A SOUND OF THUNDER movie project.
"The original story is about a man who travels back in time to look upon dinosaurs, only to be ran off the safe designated path by one of them. There, he steps upon a butterfly, altering the entire timeline to come. [Harlin said,] 'Why don't we take the butterfly out of SOUND OF THUNDER?' Can you believe that? When I heard it, I whooped with laughter. I said, 'Oh my God,... if you wanted to be accurate about being stupid, this was it.' So they fired him, and we've got a new director now."
Smart move, but I'm not sure that the guy who directed "Timecop" and "Sudden Death" was the right choice for a replacement...
My money is on the upcoming "Fahrenheit 451" directed by Frank Darabont.
I don't know about your theories, but it has been demonstrated that spam largely feeds on itself. The spammers scam eachother all the time. Selling lists of e-mail addresses with lots of claims about their high quality is so popular that (more often than you would think) the "v1a.gr@" spam you get isn't even backed up by an actual product. It's just a scam to get working e-mail addresses that are read.
Some spammers have also become "mainsleaze" spamming conslutants. Just because *you* don't get spam from [Big Corp] doesn't mean it isn't happening.
I used to find the hardware forum on mp3.com fairly useful back when MP3 CD players were new. With this new site that subject is crammed in with posts like "WHAT IS BETTER QUALITY???? MP3 FORMAT OR WAVE??? REPLY!!"
C|Net should really separate MP3 hardware topics from the generic "Tech Guide Discussion" board they've got now.
Slashdot Mirror
Deus Ex: Invisible War was (by far) the biggest thing that went wrong in 2004. The only reason it didn't make this list was because GamePro (and most of the other critics) gave it ridiculously positive reviews.
All the "video games are bad" items torn from the pages of mainstream newspapers should never have made it to this list. When damn near everyone plays or has a friend who plays video games the journalists and politicians behind these stories are pissing in the wind (and most of them know it).
You can remove Media Player with XPLite, but if you do Windows acts like the MS video codecs aren't there -- even if you install the stand-alone codec package.
Netscape 4.x
Mozilla 1.7.3
Obviously they are quite similar. I'm sure you can download a skin like this for FF, however Mozilla looks this way out of the box. Mozilla also detects and imports bookmarks and mail from NS4 with a single click on installation.
Last I checked FF had an extremely abbreviated preferences window with the rest of the options available through an enormous about: page. I like Mozilla's prefs interface better.
Moz is also a great drop-in replacement for people who are used to NS 4.x (a population that includes many of the users I support).
A person can play that $30 game "The Sims" for the rest of their life then pass it on to future generations. The entire computer game industry could implode and Joe Bob IV could still play his great great great great great grand-dad's copy of "The Sims".
This "Entropia" game is only playable for as long as the company running the server desires it. Even if they don't go out of business; Five or ten years from now they're going to come out with "Entropia II" (or whatever) and have no interest in continuing to support a game that can't keep or attract subscribers because of its "old fashioned" graphics and gameplay.
Twelve inches per foot
Two pints in a quart
Why don't we make it easy?
The English system of measurement must be layed to history
We can use units of ten and convert with ease
Like all the other countries
I am in command
Yes, I am taking a stand
From this disease we must be free
Good God!
You're drunk with your tradition
That has no validity
Well, I'm intoxicated in support of metrics
Come drink a decaliter with me
We want metrics
We want it now
We know we can win
I weigh 170 pounds
That's 90 kilograms
So metrics can even make you thin
(Yardsticks are pathetic)
All cool things are in metrics
For example, here's just one
I've got my nine
Well, that's nine millimeters
Sounds cooler than my point point-two-seventy inches gun
The permanent-if-nonexistent "they" will call me communist
They'll call me scum
But it's worth it
Canadians will think we're smart
At least they'll think we are not as dumb
You're drunk with your tradition
That has no validity
Well, I'm intoxicated in support of metrics
Come drink a decaliter with me
We want metrics
We want it now
We know we can win
I weigh 170 pounds
That's 90 kilograms
See, metrics can even make you thin
The revolution's here
We must overcome at last
As we symbolically stick their fucking foot up their fucking ass
Guitar!
You are drunk with your tradition
That has no validity
Well, I'm intoxicated in support of metrics
Come drink a decaliter with me
We want metrics
We want it now
We know we can win
I weigh 170 pounds
That's 90 kilograms
See, metric can even make me thin!
Gygax started making noise about people deviating from the rules quite a while before 2nd Ed. He even went so far as to claim that anyone who modified the rules at all was no longer playing Dungeons & Dragons. I can't find the exact cite, but I think this paragraph from A Brief History of Roleplaying Games hints at what I'm talking about:
I proclaim "erototoxin" officially worse than "killographic".
A gaming web site called "National Killographic" would be sweet, but I can't see anyone wanting to sign up for a porn site involving the word "erototoxin"....well...maybe a few people...
Have you fully investigated Steamless CS Project?
"ILM was then housed in an old warehouse in an industrial area of Van Nuys (on or near Kester St, as I recall). By coincidence, Van Nuys was where I grew up, so I knew the area well."
-- Alan Dean Foster, Some interview
"In fact, Apogee was none other than the original shop set up for Industrial Light and Magic in Van Nuys, California, by George Lucas in 1975."
-- Some site on model building
"At this point, John Dykstra got a call from Glen Larson. Glen had contacted either George Lucas or Gary Kurtz to find out if he and Universal could lease the ILM Van Nuys facility we had used to create the VFX for Star Wars, in order to shoot Battlestar Galactica."
-- Some site with an ad that wants to install an IE plug-in
"Lucas hired effects expert John Dykstra to head a new production facility, located in old warehouses in Van Nuys, California. After completing Star Wars he relocated ILM to the Bay Area." .edu site about the history of CG
-- Some
That's just a few picks from the first page of Google results, too.
At first I thought it was a rendering of the office from Glengarry Glen Ross, but then I saw the printer.
If you made the room longer, re-arranged the furniture, put some shelving under the windows and a coffee maker in the back it would be just about perfect, though...
"Not to mention, keeping wildlife...an amphibious rodent...for domestic purposes...inside the city limits. That ain't legal either"
If someone has physical access to the computer then it might as well be that easy. Bypassing the XP login screen may be a bit more obscure but it still only keeps honest people honest.
On the other hand, how many remote exploits are there for 98SE without IE, Outlook or a Media Player newer than 6.x on it?
Web Developer seems to lack several Prefbar features including navigation buttons, proxy menu, user agent spoofing, pop-up toggle, clear history, pipelining toggle and clear location bar.
There is an "alpha" linux version of ABC on that same site. I use it and it works great.
Our Windows player contains no spyware and never has.
Of course it didn't contain spyware; It was spyware! As the Anonymous Coward above points out: Real just about invented spyware-as-product. I haven't used RealPlayer Windows in many years however I will bet you any amount of money that even today it is not reasonably possible to open the fucking thing without hitting an IP address owned by Real Networks or one of its affiliates/sponsors.
RealPlayer Windows is "not spyware" the same way that the "v1agr@" ad in my inbox is "n0t sp@m": Term redefinition.
Or Sneakemail at www.sneakemail.com
Don't take that crap from this loser. Tabs make multiple browser windows only slightly more useful than an appendix or a prehensile tail. Sure, if you're doing some major research you may want to sort the tabbed sites into different windows, but for ordinary day-to-day tasks one window is the perfect number.
When you're dealing with a window (like a browser) that is going to take up nearly all of the screen no matter what is being displayed, why would you want to spend a lot of time playing with window resizing, positioning and shuffling?
In his dribble about browsers the author even mentions sites that open in new windows as if that's a good thing! Doesn't he realize that experts and novices alike hate that almost as much as pop-up ads?
Just use Mozilla instead.
Wow, did a chiropractor kill your dog or something?
Might want to wipe some of the foam off your mouth there, buddy. Someone might think you're a kook.
Smart move, but I'm not sure that the guy who directed "Timecop" and "Sudden Death" was the right choice for a replacement...
My money is on the upcoming "Fahrenheit 451" directed by Frank Darabont.
I don't know about your theories, but it has been demonstrated that spam largely feeds on itself. The spammers scam eachother all the time. Selling lists of e-mail addresses with lots of claims about their high quality is so popular that (more often than you would think) the "v1a.gr@" spam you get isn't even backed up by an actual product. It's just a scam to get working e-mail addresses that are read.
Some spammers have also become "mainsleaze" spamming conslutants. Just because *you* don't get spam from [Big Corp] doesn't mean it isn't happening.
"Ah felt...nossing. Not ze despair...Not ze dismay...Not z'amuse-mon. Nossing."
I used to find the hardware forum on mp3.com fairly useful back when MP3 CD players were new. With this new site that subject is crammed in with posts like "WHAT IS BETTER QUALITY???? MP3 FORMAT OR WAVE??? REPLY!!"
C|Net should really separate MP3 hardware topics from the generic "Tech Guide Discussion" board they've got now.