Were it anything but a problem local to your machine there would be an outcry, and of course there isn't.
Sure there is... on the other art sites and forums I visit. There's been plenty of discussion about DA's broken gallery. I just haven't been on DA long enough to know if the complaints are on that site.
Seriously, try a little troubleshooting to figure out what the actual problem is.
I've read the JavaScript source. The biggest problem was a constant barrage of "location.toString", which is a security violation in FireFox, and ceases all JS execution in the current window. Like I said, I also ran into a problem with an auto-download of a PDF file. I don't think things like that qualify as a local problem. That was going on for weeks, not just a day or two.
Now, at the moment, things seem to be working normally. A few months ago when I signed up for an account, their site was most definitely broken in Firefox.
I'm 99.9% sure both dA and their advertising affiliates test their ads on FireFox to make sure they work...
Call me cynical, but from my experience, people only care if ads are going to do "bad things" to the viewers. Technical problems and poorly written code tend to leak through ad services all the time.
Of course, the web browsers are really at fault for this. Lumping all JS code into the same address space is just idiotic.
Point is, deviantART is hardly a worthless piece of shit. Sometimes they just made bad choices about what ads to use.
Indeed. I can't use Firefox at all to browse their site -- I have to use Opera. Their current line of ads are always throwing JavaScript errors, and even one error kills all JavaScript support on any site. Since their site requires JavaScript to function, just navigating between gallery pages is impossible. Don't they know their site is completely broken in such a popular browser? Hell, don't they know some of their ads partners are sending PDF files, for whatever reason? There's no way they can't be aware of these problems. That's not bad choices, it's choosing to completely ignore the issue altogether.
Screw Web 2.0. Until web browsers start becoming more robust with their JavaScript support, and can tell the difference between 1st party and 3rd party JS, just about everything will remain broken. Unfortunately, most web sites I come across don't seem to care.
The Sonic Team was showing off too much in Sonic Adventure. You had limited control over the camera, and it would zip around all over the place on its own. An unpredictable camera is horrible, no matter how much work went into the AI to predict what the player wants to see.
The proper way to use the camera for any high-paced 3D game is a fixed viewpoint, so when controlling the character, you don't fight with the camera. It's not a visibility issue, it's a control issue, so smarter camera AI isn't going to help. The camera needs to be dumber and not move around unexpectedly.
Of course, that doesn't look as cool, which is why they keep screwing it up. Sticking with 3D graphics is fine for this kind of game, so long as the camera stays in 2D!
That would be true only if it were optional. Instead, it's just trendy. I remember when Photoshop was redesigned with a horizontal brush palette, which make absolutely no sense given the rise of wide screens and dual displays. Predictably, however, many other paint programs copied the new design. It did get a lot of attention, after all, for better or for worse.
It could be argued that menus have been a part of application design for decades because they work, at least if they are executed well. Getting rid of them because the focus group said it's the new thing is just fucking stupid.
I hate Chrome with a passion, and I do not want to see Firefox or anything else go down that road of forced minimalism. Let me configure the interface the way I want it, please.
Interesting. I remember buying a used game from an online store, and when I got it, it was entirely obvious that it was a CD copy with an inkjet printed label. It played perfectly without me needing a mod chip in the console, and I always wondered why it worked without needing hardware modification.
I also wondered why the online store agreed to take the disc back without any objection, because I thought for sure they had just ripped me off. I guess they didn't realize it was a pirated copy, despite the obvious lack of any Sega hologram markings. They probably just popped it into a Dreamcast, saw that it worked, and figured it was a legit copy, safe to re-sell.
Apple to take responsibility. When you buy a Mac, it has a huge Apple logo on it, and nothing else. They thrive off their image of making something that "just works", even when it doesn't. I used to be a Mac sysadmin, so I'm quite familiar with how Apple reacts to many issues, thank you.
They make profit off the products, even though they largely just take components from other companies and put them together (or hire Foxxcon or LG to do it for them). If something goes wrong, it's their responsibility to properly explain what happened, fix it, and then seek reimbursement from their supplier. Telling people a defect is "normal" doesn't cut it.
Yea, it;s premium compared to a $500 notebook, but it is NOT premium compared to a 15" dell Studio that has the same specs and costs $80 more...
I have no idea what you're talking about. I just looked at a Dell Studio 17" a few days ago, and it came out to $850 with free shipping. I didn't buy it, though. Apple doesn't offer anything larger than a netbook for less than $1,000. Plus, few PC laptops sell for MSRP, because they all have rebates or some other sales gimmick, like car dealerships do. Apple products are a little hard to find at less than MSRP.
Yes, they have premium prices, and they always have throughout their history. Let's stop pretending they don't.
Unfortunately, the system in the Seagate HDD was much more sensitive, or conflicted with Apple's own protection system built into the macbook, and it took SEAGATE a couple of weeks to develop a patch that Apple tested and then distributed.
Yes, and the captain goes down with the ship.
People pay a premium to get a premium product, not to be told that flaws and flukes are normal.
What next? Bad drivers break up traffic jams? People lining up single file at a ticket booth? Zippers?
I wish the people who built my high school had known this. After a pep rally, I was shocked at how kids were squeezing their way through the doorway in a huge clump. Unfortunately, someone got their foot under my leg and I fell over, and I was stampeded for, oh, a good 40 seconds before anyone realized they were stomping on the back of a person. Then, the principal yelled at me for the incident. Herd mentality at its finest.
Consumers only [i]care[/i] about base cost. They don't keep track of how much money they spend. Hence, free phones with outrageous texting costs.
People can easily end up spending $500 on a Wii if they get a bunch of the optional accessories. None of these people will admit the PS3 is a better deal in any given case. Hell, how many people beat that horse about DVD not being necessary, because they can just buy a $40 player separately?
A footer doesn't do much for usability. I'd rather see a standard tag for a menu, rather than hacking one together with unordered lists.
Dedicated elements for headers and footers, but not for menus or other navigation? What's the point in that? Menus are the most difficult thing to code, many web sites use 100K+ of code to animate and subdivide them, and when you turn off CSS, using them is a nightmare. So why make fixing menus a low priority?
I saw exactly the same thing at the Boston Computer Museum. Obviously, there's no need to know what kind of computers were running all the displays in a museum, since you have to maintain the magic and illusion of the Black Box.
That's probably why when I went, most of the machines were Amigas, and were hidden in painted wooden boxes. Several name-brand PCs has their cases and keyboards spray painted in brilliant colors. They did have an Atari ST that wasn't hidden from view, though. It was running the gift shop cash register.
All the Macs, however, were prominently on display, and there was a 15-ft Apple banner sprawled across the ceiling. Go figure.
Advertisers don't understand subtlety. Ever see a movie that puts Coca-Cola bottles front-and-center?
It's not about ads being there. It's about the ads becoming intrusive. By their very nature, ads need attention, and making ads unassuming background props isn't going to make any sponsor happy.
I bought "Driver" about a decade ago, and the packaging was plastered with ads for car products. The game didn't cost less than any other game.
Wipeout HD is decent, but for $20, does it really need ad sponsorship? Did the base price drop after the ads were implemented?
What about Blu-ray? You bought a player and a $30 movie, and you're rewarded with ads for Blu-ray. WTF? I bought the player already, didn't I? Is the ad supposed to convince me to buy a second player?
Ads are for padding profits. If the game isn't free, then the ads don't do anything for me. Also, personally, I'd rather pay for a game without ads than get a free game with ads. That way, I'm paying for what I want, and not simply using what the ad companies think I want.
If people don't buy, but don't say why, the company will just whine about piracy and continue funding rootkit development. Bad PR or not, I don't see DRM losing popularity any time soon.
Ask anyone who bought a JMicron-based SSD about insufficient testing. How any company thought that controller was worthy for their SSDs is beyond me.
Before I replaced mine with a Samsung SSD, my [censored] was regularly giving me studders and pauses that lasted for 20-40 seconds at a time. It just flat-out halted everything on the computer for half a minute for no apparent reason, even while reading, not just writing. Apparently, this was predominant behavior for the controller that dominated the SSD arena until the X-25 started blowing people away.
I think I understand now why Seagate, WD, and the other HD manufacturers are taking so long to get SSDs on the market. Since their market depends almost exclusively on storage, they can't afford to screw up their first SSDs. At least, I hope that's the reason. Even they have to understand that the hard drive market isn't going to last forever.
Back when I tried Napster, only popular artists has songs listed under their own names. Everyone else was "unknown".
One of the points of copyrights is to ensure credit. Credit does not necessarily mean profit. I would be plenty pissed if my art was circulating around the Internet, everybody liked it, and I had a ton of fans, and... nobody actually knew who I was. Don't even get me started about mis-credited works.
Napster was bad. Period. I couldn't find anything from my favorite obscure artists with that service.
I remember when I was in a computer art class in college, and I got fed up with how slow, unstable, and useless the Macs were. So, I left class, walked back to my dorm room, boot up my computer, did my assignment, printed it out, and walked back to class in less time than it took anyone else to do their work on the "Power" Macs. Ah, the advantages of "studio time".
Windows95 was the kick in the ass Apple needed, and that is when they made a truly clever decision: they finally admit they couldn't write an OS, canceled Copland, and merged with NeXT.
Some people have already suggested that common names will cause problems with this system. The next big thing should be searching by context. I hate searching for "supernova" only to get a long list of songs by some band. The keyword "space" or "star" helps, but that usually results in other false hits, too. Don't even get me started on acronyms, or things that don't have anything to do with computer technology.
Would there be any way for a search engine to examine a whole bunch of keywords and content in a page, and learn the difference between the context of music and astronomy? That would be a big help.
The trouble is, the games run normally at those framerates, not just during the benchmarks. Yay, tomorrow's games will only occasionally dip below the monitor's refresh rate, but today's games don't sync, either! Life is good!
HD is simply higher resolution, and even budget PC hardware has been able to do HD-comparable resolutions for years. I wish people would stop making excuses that going to HD can result in framerate and responsiveness problems when the real issue is that developers are simply throwing in too many polygons, too many pixel shader effects, using memory for textures instead of the frame buffer, and basically making their 3D engines too inflexible. Oh yeah, and the fonts are too small. Force these people to use an SDTV over a composite cable once in a while, please.
What next? Benchmark pissing wars? I've already had my fill of PC enthusiasts gloating over 140 FPS with their $600 video cards, completely oblivious to the fact that if the video isn't synced with the 60Hz LCD display, the graphics are actually going to look [i]worse[/i]. Consoles are already showing PC-like issues like frame tearing and no v-sync. Haven't we already fixed these problems in the PC industry?
Slashdot Mirror
Were it anything but a problem local to your machine there would be an outcry, and of course there isn't.
Sure there is... on the other art sites and forums I visit. There's been plenty of discussion about DA's broken gallery. I just haven't been on DA long enough to know if the complaints are on that site.
Seriously, try a little troubleshooting to figure out what the actual problem is.
I've read the JavaScript source. The biggest problem was a constant barrage of "location.toString", which is a security violation in FireFox, and ceases all JS execution in the current window. Like I said, I also ran into a problem with an auto-download of a PDF file. I don't think things like that qualify as a local problem. That was going on for weeks, not just a day or two.
Now, at the moment, things seem to be working normally. A few months ago when I signed up for an account, their site was most definitely broken in Firefox.
I'm 99.9% sure both dA and their advertising affiliates test their ads on FireFox to make sure they work...
Call me cynical, but from my experience, people only care if ads are going to do "bad things" to the viewers. Technical problems and poorly written code tend to leak through ad services all the time.
Of course, the web browsers are really at fault for this. Lumping all JS code into the same address space is just idiotic.
Point is, deviantART is hardly a worthless piece of shit. Sometimes they just made bad choices about what ads to use.
Indeed. I can't use Firefox at all to browse their site -- I have to use Opera. Their current line of ads are always throwing JavaScript errors, and even one error kills all JavaScript support on any site. Since their site requires JavaScript to function, just navigating between gallery pages is impossible. Don't they know their site is completely broken in such a popular browser? Hell, don't they know some of their ads partners are sending PDF files, for whatever reason? There's no way they can't be aware of these problems. That's not bad choices, it's choosing to completely ignore the issue altogether.
Screw Web 2.0. Until web browsers start becoming more robust with their JavaScript support, and can tell the difference between 1st party and 3rd party JS, just about everything will remain broken. Unfortunately, most web sites I come across don't seem to care.
The Sonic Team was showing off too much in Sonic Adventure. You had limited control over the camera, and it would zip around all over the place on its own. An unpredictable camera is horrible, no matter how much work went into the AI to predict what the player wants to see.
The proper way to use the camera for any high-paced 3D game is a fixed viewpoint, so when controlling the character, you don't fight with the camera. It's not a visibility issue, it's a control issue, so smarter camera AI isn't going to help. The camera needs to be dumber and not move around unexpectedly.
Of course, that doesn't look as cool, which is why they keep screwing it up. Sticking with 3D graphics is fine for this kind of game, so long as the camera stays in 2D!
You didn't see "The Abyss", did you?
Wait, all CDRs? Is this for real?
People have to pay a tax to back up all their e-mail and spreadsheets?
Memorizing epic poems and the Bible has the same effect, I've heard. Choose your material carefully.
They're probably just saving that feature for 7.0.
Sometimes you stay on top by spending months working on revolutionary technology. Sometimes, for moving a few buttons.
They seem to want to save vertical screen space
That would be true only if it were optional. Instead, it's just trendy. I remember when Photoshop was redesigned with a horizontal brush palette, which make absolutely no sense given the rise of wide screens and dual displays. Predictably, however, many other paint programs copied the new design. It did get a lot of attention, after all, for better or for worse.
It could be argued that menus have been a part of application design for decades because they work, at least if they are executed well. Getting rid of them because the focus group said it's the new thing is just fucking stupid.
I hate Chrome with a passion, and I do not want to see Firefox or anything else go down that road of forced minimalism. Let me configure the interface the way I want it, please.
Interesting. I remember buying a used game from an online store, and when I got it, it was entirely obvious that it was a CD copy with an inkjet printed label. It played perfectly without me needing a mod chip in the console, and I always wondered why it worked without needing hardware modification.
I also wondered why the online store agreed to take the disc back without any objection, because I thought for sure they had just ripped me off. I guess they didn't realize it was a pirated copy, despite the obvious lack of any Sega hologram markings. They probably just popped it into a Dreamcast, saw that it worked, and figured it was a legit copy, safe to re-sell.
What the fuck do you want???
Apple to take responsibility. When you buy a Mac, it has a huge Apple logo on it, and nothing else. They thrive off their image of making something that "just works", even when it doesn't. I used to be a Mac sysadmin, so I'm quite familiar with how Apple reacts to many issues, thank you.
They make profit off the products, even though they largely just take components from other companies and put them together (or hire Foxxcon or LG to do it for them). If something goes wrong, it's their responsibility to properly explain what happened, fix it, and then seek reimbursement from their supplier. Telling people a defect is "normal" doesn't cut it.
Yea, it;s premium compared to a $500 notebook, but it is NOT premium compared to a 15" dell Studio that has the same specs and costs $80 more...
I have no idea what you're talking about. I just looked at a Dell Studio 17" a few days ago, and it came out to $850 with free shipping. I didn't buy it, though. Apple doesn't offer anything larger than a netbook for less than $1,000. Plus, few PC laptops sell for MSRP, because they all have rebates or some other sales gimmick, like car dealerships do. Apple products are a little hard to find at less than MSRP.
Yes, they have premium prices, and they always have throughout their history. Let's stop pretending they don't.
Unfortunately, the system in the Seagate HDD was much more sensitive, or conflicted with Apple's own protection system built into the macbook, and it took SEAGATE a couple of weeks to develop a patch that Apple tested and then distributed.
Yes, and the captain goes down with the ship.
People pay a premium to get a premium product, not to be told that flaws and flukes are normal.
What next? Bad drivers break up traffic jams? People lining up single file at a ticket booth? Zippers?
I wish the people who built my high school had known this. After a pep rally, I was shocked at how kids were squeezing their way through the doorway in a huge clump. Unfortunately, someone got their foot under my leg and I fell over, and I was stampeded for, oh, a good 40 seconds before anyone realized they were stomping on the back of a person. Then, the principal yelled at me for the incident. Herd mentality at its finest.
"Vertical monopoly" is the appropriate term.
Consumers only [i]care[/i] about base cost. They don't keep track of how much money they spend. Hence, free phones with outrageous texting costs.
People can easily end up spending $500 on a Wii if they get a bunch of the optional accessories. None of these people will admit the PS3 is a better deal in any given case. Hell, how many people beat that horse about DVD not being necessary, because they can just buy a $40 player separately?
A footer doesn't do much for usability. I'd rather see a standard tag for a menu, rather than hacking one together with unordered lists.
Dedicated elements for headers and footers, but not for menus or other navigation? What's the point in that? Menus are the most difficult thing to code, many web sites use 100K+ of code to animate and subdivide them, and when you turn off CSS, using them is a nightmare. So why make fixing menus a low priority?
I saw exactly the same thing at the Boston Computer Museum. Obviously, there's no need to know what kind of computers were running all the displays in a museum, since you have to maintain the magic and illusion of the Black Box.
That's probably why when I went, most of the machines were Amigas, and were hidden in painted wooden boxes. Several name-brand PCs has their cases and keyboards spray painted in brilliant colors. They did have an Atari ST that wasn't hidden from view, though. It was running the gift shop cash register.
All the Macs, however, were prominently on display, and there was a 15-ft Apple banner sprawled across the ceiling. Go figure.
Advertisers don't understand subtlety. Ever see a movie that puts Coca-Cola bottles front-and-center?
It's not about ads being there. It's about the ads becoming intrusive. By their very nature, ads need attention, and making ads unassuming background props isn't going to make any sponsor happy.
Since when do ads drop the cost of a product?
I bought "Driver" about a decade ago, and the packaging was plastered with ads for car products. The game didn't cost less than any other game.
Wipeout HD is decent, but for $20, does it really need ad sponsorship? Did the base price drop after the ads were implemented?
What about Blu-ray? You bought a player and a $30 movie, and you're rewarded with ads for Blu-ray. WTF? I bought the player already, didn't I? Is the ad supposed to convince me to buy a second player?
Ads are for padding profits. If the game isn't free, then the ads don't do anything for me. Also, personally, I'd rather pay for a game without ads than get a free game with ads. That way, I'm paying for what I want, and not simply using what the ad companies think I want.
Did you tell them, too?
If people don't buy, but don't say why, the company will just whine about piracy and continue funding rootkit development. Bad PR or not, I don't see DRM losing popularity any time soon.
Ask anyone who bought a JMicron-based SSD about insufficient testing. How any company thought that controller was worthy for their SSDs is beyond me.
Before I replaced mine with a Samsung SSD, my [censored] was regularly giving me studders and pauses that lasted for 20-40 seconds at a time. It just flat-out halted everything on the computer for half a minute for no apparent reason, even while reading, not just writing. Apparently, this was predominant behavior for the controller that dominated the SSD arena until the X-25 started blowing people away.
I think I understand now why Seagate, WD, and the other HD manufacturers are taking so long to get SSDs on the market. Since their market depends almost exclusively on storage, they can't afford to screw up their first SSDs. At least, I hope that's the reason. Even they have to understand that the hard drive market isn't going to last forever.
Back when I tried Napster, only popular artists has songs listed under their own names. Everyone else was "unknown".
One of the points of copyrights is to ensure credit. Credit does not necessarily mean profit. I would be plenty pissed if my art was circulating around the Internet, everybody liked it, and I had a ton of fans, and... nobody actually knew who I was. Don't even get me started about mis-credited works.
Napster was bad. Period. I couldn't find anything from my favorite obscure artists with that service.
I remember when I was in a computer art class in college, and I got fed up with how slow, unstable, and useless the Macs were. So, I left class, walked back to my dorm room, boot up my computer, did my assignment, printed it out, and walked back to class in less time than it took anyone else to do their work on the "Power" Macs. Ah, the advantages of "studio time".
Windows95 was the kick in the ass Apple needed, and that is when they made a truly clever decision: they finally admit they couldn't write an OS, canceled Copland, and merged with NeXT.
Some people have already suggested that common names will cause problems with this system. The next big thing should be searching by context. I hate searching for "supernova" only to get a long list of songs by some band. The keyword "space" or "star" helps, but that usually results in other false hits, too. Don't even get me started on acronyms, or things that don't have anything to do with computer technology.
Would there be any way for a search engine to examine a whole bunch of keywords and content in a page, and learn the difference between the context of music and astronomy? That would be a big help.
The trouble is, the games run normally at those framerates, not just during the benchmarks. Yay, tomorrow's games will only occasionally dip below the monitor's refresh rate, but today's games don't sync, either! Life is good!
HD is simply higher resolution, and even budget PC hardware has been able to do HD-comparable resolutions for years. I wish people would stop making excuses that going to HD can result in framerate and responsiveness problems when the real issue is that developers are simply throwing in too many polygons, too many pixel shader effects, using memory for textures instead of the frame buffer, and basically making their 3D engines too inflexible. Oh yeah, and the fonts are too small. Force these people to use an SDTV over a composite cable once in a while, please.
What next? Benchmark pissing wars? I've already had my fill of PC enthusiasts gloating over 140 FPS with their $600 video cards, completely oblivious to the fact that if the video isn't synced with the 60Hz LCD display, the graphics are actually going to look [i]worse[/i]. Consoles are already showing PC-like issues like frame tearing and no v-sync. Haven't we already fixed these problems in the PC industry?