I think MS consciously chooses to keep IE incompatible with the standards so that sites developed for IE don't work in other browsers that are standards compliant.
I'll play devil's advocate and say that you're wrong. When running in strict mode, each version of IE renders pages differently with various degrees of standards compliance. If there were a conspiracy to make things work in IE and not other browsers, I'd expect each version of IE to have some level of consistency across versions, and not mess up IE-specific code written for previous versions of the browser. In reality, IE's rendering engine just stinks.
I just use simple CSS1 and all my web designs work fine in IE strict mode. I can't say CSS2 works properly in Firefox or Opera, either, so I just avoid it when possible. So long as you have multiple companies trying to follow the same standard, you're never going to have standards compliance. There's no conspiracy about it. Laziness... maybe.
As for all the people out there still making bad web code, well, we can't do anything about them.
If an interface concept is used in a movie and it is eventually turned into a real product and patented, does the implementation in the movie count as prior art?
I have a feeling prior art only applies to real, manufactured products, but I figured I'd ask. Wait... are we talking about patenting IP, where there isn't always a real product?
Please explain how acrobat had write permission to the operating system files.
I've always wondered why this matters. The OS is replaceable, but my files are not.
So long as any app has access to my Home folder, and can send e-mails under my account, and search through my web browser cache, and snoop through my desktop environment... who gives a damn about the OS?
Oh, look. JavaScript still has the ability to disable all my navigation buttons in Firefox... on Linux. Why the hell do the browser developers still allow that?
In one way or another, everyone is overconfident and negligent, and when I see a Linux person dismiss the possibility of a virus getting on his Linux machine, I think about all the Mac people from 10 years ago telling me their Macs NEVER EVER crash, even with all 120 system extensions running simultaneously without memory protection. Some people just don't want to think their precious platform isn't as good as the community says it is.
Besides, when it comes to working file security, that's more the realm of high-level applications, like KDE, rather than "Linux". How nice that your kernel is bombproof when a lot of security and good practice must be handled by apps.
This "No viruses for linux/bsd/osx because they are not popular" is simply microsoft propaganda.
Bullshit. You need to work with dozens of OSes over 15 years to know how absurd that statement is. Trying to detect the target platform and tailor an attack can possibly expose your exploit, so you use a blue ocean strategy. It's not hard to see why one platform is targeted over others.
Now, excuse me, I'm going to continue investigating why my Java app is crashing Safari.
Yes, I'm sure these are self-powered hubs. I have this problem myself with my digital camera, and I've tried using the powered USB ports on my power switch box. I can charge my PS3 controller with my computer off with no problem, but my scanner will only scan less than half an image before locking up.
I used to work in a camera store, so I had the chance to mess around with a lot of equipment, and helped numerous people with this problem. Every time someone called the store and told me the equipment they bought wasn't working, I asked them to plug the device directly into the back of the computer. Almost all the time, it worked. Maybe it's just an issue with cheap, badly designed USB controllers, and I assume there's plenty of those around.
I don't know the real cause of the problem, but I do recall that many high-speed USB devices, such as scanners and digital cameras, will only work from a root port, and not a hub.
Any technical input on this? It drives me nuts when people try to plug things into any brand of hub and the device often won't even be recognized, but plug it directly into the computer, and it will work just fine.
In the middle of a Massachusetts blizzard with 7" of packed snow on the ground, people still drive their crappy 2WD pickup trucks at 40MPH and can be seen regularly plowing into telephone poles.
Thank goodness for modern technology telling me how hazardous the conditions are! The roads aren't so great either.
It doesn't help that this is a thread about game consoles. I really feel I should stop reading gaming blogs altogether due to the sheer undiluted anger and retard that rivals the worst/b/.
I've always wondered if the PS3 could be reduced in cost like the PS2 was. Hard drives, for example, and not cost flexible components. They get larger over time, but not much cheaper.
I don't expect to see a PS3 selling for $150 within its manufactured lifetime. Making money on the hardware in the twilight years of a high-tech, large-feature console is pretty questionable these days.
Thank goodness for online videos and other DRM-laden fluff!
I wonder how much complexity would be added by the fault detection and repair logic to offset the advantage of this kind of die shrink. I take it atom chips would quickly deteriorate in speed as more and more cores fail?
I have a bunch of devices back from the 80's that are barely warm to the touch and will work forever. I can't say the same about even a conservatively designed modern computer, let alone all the hand-held devices that are engineered to die from exhausted polymer batteries after a year.
Every major office software program I've ever used has had a horrible UI, no matter how many times they try to simplify it and make it pretty.
I really hate this new trend of cleaning up the UI by getting rid of common, well-known UI elements like drop-down menus (I'm looking at you, Chrome), because it makes it look modern and simple. It doesn't improve usability and often doesn't even increase real estate in a meaningful way. Like almost all changes to programs these days, it's just trendy.
Every good UI designer knows that you don't make something easy to use simply by cutting down on the number of elements. You make it easy to use by properly prioritizing, clearly labeling everything, and letting people get rid of the things they don't need. My answering machine has one quarter as many buttons as the one at my previous job, but it's 10x as frustrating due to all the modal operations.
Now, can Vista please give me back my parent folder button? I never used "Copy To" and "Move To", but I actually used "Up" a lot.
Hardly new. I remember when updating all the PowerMac 8500 machines in our office to OS 8.0 a decade ago. The new OS caused the CD-ROMs in [i]half[/i] of our entire Mac network to stop working. They just didn't exist anymore, save for holding the "C" key on bootup (first time ever I could actually push the "eject" button and have it work every time). Also, for the Macs where the CD-ROMs did work, inserting an audio CD caused an instant system lock-up. That drove our Arts and Entertainment department nuts.
For months, I had to install new software over the network. Back then, there were no critical updates, and I believe it took Apple about 6+ months to release the much-applauded 15MB 8.1 "Superpatch" which finally fixed the CD-ROM issue. There were no other patches either before or after the 8.1 update -- Apple wanted everyone to buy 8.5 to get other fixes.
BTW, all the Macs that had the CD-ROM fail had Sony disc drives, and the Macs that worked fine had Toshiba drives. So much for a closed platform with limited hardware configurations. Even back then, it was mostly PC hardware.
I wonder if the problem would have been lessened by giving the Wiimote some texture, a properly curved gripping surface, or rubber sides. Real remote controls tend to get that kind of treatment, and we don't even whip those around in the air [often].
Straight, flat, smooth, glossy plastic is a pretty bad way of designing something that's meant to be moved around a lot. But, hey, it looks really cool in promo shots, and looking cool is half of what sells stuff.
CSS could really use expanding spacers. It's a staple of almost all GUI toolkits, why is it so hard for CSS to do it?
I find it pretty ironic that "new" HTML and CSS designs are supposed to be widely accessible, but it's virtually impossible to have things properly aligned side-by-side in a truly resolution independent document. You have to hard-code all kinds of pixel measurements to keep things from breaking or even overlapping. That defeats the whole point! Horizontal unordered lists can only do so much.
Who says you have to beat Microsoft? You don't have to be a market leader to get decent support, you just need enough market share to make your platform viable. Linux has been around for a very long time, and if it hasn't gained enough market share by now, that means there is something that keeps the majority of people from adopting it. So what?
Linux was designed from the start to be a free educational clone of UNIX. That made it great for dominating the UNIX market, but Linux will never beat Microsoft with priorities like that. But, it doesn't have to.
Because they may want to reprint it later as demand rises? Demand has to be high enough to justify the minimum bulk manufacturing run.
Out-of-print doesn't mean the book isn't available, only that the supply comes from a retailer's warehouse, rather than from the publisher's warehouse. If people pirate out-of-print copies, under the assumption that the authors won't get royalties anyway, all that does it reduce retail sales, which reduces the manufacturing runs, which then reduces royalties.
People need to stop comparing out-of-print with out-of-stock. Most anti-DRM and anti-piracy arguments I hear involve only the authors and publishers. A proper anti-piracy argument should include the whole distribution infrastructure, no matter how many middle-men are involved or how inefficient it may be.
Complain about the middle-men and the inefficiencies in the distribution methods. Complain about DRM. Don't complain about copyrights. If a copyright allows me to copy my purchase however I like for my own use, then there's no problem.
Dammit, I'm tired of people trying to automate everything. Having trouble making your UI accessible? Why, just boot up some development software and let the computer do everything for you.
I'm glad that the field of interface design has become much more important over the years, but we still have a long, long way to go. Real interface designers are aware of issues such as tiny print, bad widget groups, color blindness, and alternative input devices. That's what we do.
Trusting technology to solve the problem isn't going to work. You need people who are aware of the issues and know how to plan for them. A recent example was Rare's new Banjo Kazooie game. The game is made for HDTVs, so naturally they made all the text so damn small people have a hard time reading it on SDTVs. Has anyone considered that even on an HDTV, the end user's eyes may not be good enough to read the text on a 27" screen from across the room? The programmers have their fancy DVI monitors for software testing, and don't think about these issues.
The screenshot from the article particularly annoys me. They made the scrollbars bigger. Big whoop! How about letting me toggle between different types of data-compatible widgets, or disabling parts of the interface I don't use frequently to clear up valuable real estate? People with disabilities want to be independent, but there are still people around to help set-up a proper working environment, so let people choose for themselves what is important, with the option to remember different setups and reverse changes.
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I think MS consciously chooses to keep IE incompatible with the standards so that sites developed for IE don't work in other browsers that are standards compliant.
I'll play devil's advocate and say that you're wrong. When running in strict mode, each version of IE renders pages differently with various degrees of standards compliance. If there were a conspiracy to make things work in IE and not other browsers, I'd expect each version of IE to have some level of consistency across versions, and not mess up IE-specific code written for previous versions of the browser. In reality, IE's rendering engine just stinks.
I just use simple CSS1 and all my web designs work fine in IE strict mode. I can't say CSS2 works properly in Firefox or Opera, either, so I just avoid it when possible. So long as you have multiple companies trying to follow the same standard, you're never going to have standards compliance. There's no conspiracy about it. Laziness... maybe.
As for all the people out there still making bad web code, well, we can't do anything about them.
If an interface concept is used in a movie and it is eventually turned into a real product and patented, does the implementation in the movie count as prior art?
I have a feeling prior art only applies to real, manufactured products, but I figured I'd ask. Wait... are we talking about patenting IP, where there isn't always a real product?
Please explain how acrobat had write permission to the operating system files.
I've always wondered why this matters. The OS is replaceable, but my files are not.
So long as any app has access to my Home folder, and can send e-mails under my account, and search through my web browser cache, and snoop through my desktop environment... who gives a damn about the OS?
Oh, look. JavaScript still has the ability to disable all my navigation buttons in Firefox... on Linux. Why the hell do the browser developers still allow that?
In one way or another, everyone is overconfident and negligent, and when I see a Linux person dismiss the possibility of a virus getting on his Linux machine, I think about all the Mac people from 10 years ago telling me their Macs NEVER EVER crash, even with all 120 system extensions running simultaneously without memory protection. Some people just don't want to think their precious platform isn't as good as the community says it is.
Besides, when it comes to working file security, that's more the realm of high-level applications, like KDE, rather than "Linux". How nice that your kernel is bombproof when a lot of security and good practice must be handled by apps.
This "No viruses for linux/bsd/osx because they are not popular" is simply microsoft propaganda.
Bullshit. You need to work with dozens of OSes over 15 years to know how absurd that statement is. Trying to detect the target platform and tailor an attack can possibly expose your exploit, so you use a blue ocean strategy. It's not hard to see why one platform is targeted over others.
Now, excuse me, I'm going to continue investigating why my Java app is crashing Safari.
How about a big truck? This is the Internet, after all.
Yes, I'm sure these are self-powered hubs. I have this problem myself with my digital camera, and I've tried using the powered USB ports on my power switch box. I can charge my PS3 controller with my computer off with no problem, but my scanner will only scan less than half an image before locking up.
I used to work in a camera store, so I had the chance to mess around with a lot of equipment, and helped numerous people with this problem. Every time someone called the store and told me the equipment they bought wasn't working, I asked them to plug the device directly into the back of the computer. Almost all the time, it worked. Maybe it's just an issue with cheap, badly designed USB controllers, and I assume there's plenty of those around.
I don't know the real cause of the problem, but I do recall that many high-speed USB devices, such as scanners and digital cameras, will only work from a root port, and not a hub.
Any technical input on this? It drives me nuts when people try to plug things into any brand of hub and the device often won't even be recognized, but plug it directly into the computer, and it will work just fine.
Having a cloud in your own house would be nice, so everyone could share computing power across multiple computers.
I, for one, do not want my computing power on lease.
In the middle of a Massachusetts blizzard with 7" of packed snow on the ground, people still drive their crappy 2WD pickup trucks at 40MPH and can be seen regularly plowing into telephone poles.
Thank goodness for modern technology telling me how hazardous the conditions are! The roads aren't so great either.
It was last year's model the instant you bought it.
It doesn't help that this is a thread about game consoles. I really feel I should stop reading gaming blogs altogether due to the sheer undiluted anger and retard that rivals the worst /b/.
I've always wondered if the PS3 could be reduced in cost like the PS2 was. Hard drives, for example, and not cost flexible components. They get larger over time, but not much cheaper.
I don't expect to see a PS3 selling for $150 within its manufactured lifetime. Making money on the hardware in the twilight years of a high-tech, large-feature console is pretty questionable these days.
Thank goodness for online videos and other DRM-laden fluff!
I wonder how much complexity would be added by the fault detection and repair logic to offset the advantage of this kind of die shrink. I take it atom chips would quickly deteriorate in speed as more and more cores fail?
I have a bunch of devices back from the 80's that are barely warm to the touch and will work forever. I can't say the same about even a conservatively designed modern computer, let alone all the hand-held devices that are engineered to die from exhausted polymer batteries after a year.
Every major office software program I've ever used has had a horrible UI, no matter how many times they try to simplify it and make it pretty.
I really hate this new trend of cleaning up the UI by getting rid of common, well-known UI elements like drop-down menus (I'm looking at you, Chrome), because it makes it look modern and simple. It doesn't improve usability and often doesn't even increase real estate in a meaningful way. Like almost all changes to programs these days, it's just trendy.
Every good UI designer knows that you don't make something easy to use simply by cutting down on the number of elements. You make it easy to use by properly prioritizing, clearly labeling everything, and letting people get rid of the things they don't need. My answering machine has one quarter as many buttons as the one at my previous job, but it's 10x as frustrating due to all the modal operations.
Now, can Vista please give me back my parent folder button? I never used "Copy To" and "Move To", but I actually used "Up" a lot.
Hardly new. I remember when updating all the PowerMac 8500 machines in our office to OS 8.0 a decade ago. The new OS caused the CD-ROMs in [i]half[/i] of our entire Mac network to stop working. They just didn't exist anymore, save for holding the "C" key on bootup (first time ever I could actually push the "eject" button and have it work every time). Also, for the Macs where the CD-ROMs did work, inserting an audio CD caused an instant system lock-up. That drove our Arts and Entertainment department nuts.
For months, I had to install new software over the network. Back then, there were no critical updates, and I believe it took Apple about 6+ months to release the much-applauded 15MB 8.1 "Superpatch" which finally fixed the CD-ROM issue. There were no other patches either before or after the 8.1 update -- Apple wanted everyone to buy 8.5 to get other fixes.
BTW, all the Macs that had the CD-ROM fail had Sony disc drives, and the Macs that worked fine had Toshiba drives. So much for a closed platform with limited hardware configurations. Even back then, it was mostly PC hardware.
This should be more Insightful than Funny. I think you're theory is correct!
Pics or it didn't happen!
I wonder if the problem would have been lessened by giving the Wiimote some texture, a properly curved gripping surface, or rubber sides. Real remote controls tend to get that kind of treatment, and we don't even whip those around in the air [often].
Straight, flat, smooth, glossy plastic is a pretty bad way of designing something that's meant to be moved around a lot. But, hey, it looks really cool in promo shots, and looking cool is half of what sells stuff.
I think you accidentally swapped steps 4 and 6.
CSS could really use expanding spacers. It's a staple of almost all GUI toolkits, why is it so hard for CSS to do it?
I find it pretty ironic that "new" HTML and CSS designs are supposed to be widely accessible, but it's virtually impossible to have things properly aligned side-by-side in a truly resolution independent document. You have to hard-code all kinds of pixel measurements to keep things from breaking or even overlapping. That defeats the whole point! Horizontal unordered lists can only do so much.
In other words, sometimes you just need some good luck, like with starting a business.
Makes sense to me.
+5 Informative madness, no less.
It could be highly marketable if it involves handing out sandviches.
Who says you have to beat Microsoft? You don't have to be a market leader to get decent support, you just need enough market share to make your platform viable. Linux has been around for a very long time, and if it hasn't gained enough market share by now, that means there is something that keeps the majority of people from adopting it. So what?
Linux was designed from the start to be a free educational clone of UNIX. That made it great for dominating the UNIX market, but Linux will never beat Microsoft with priorities like that. But, it doesn't have to.
Because they may want to reprint it later as demand rises? Demand has to be high enough to justify the minimum bulk manufacturing run.
Out-of-print doesn't mean the book isn't available, only that the supply comes from a retailer's warehouse, rather than from the publisher's warehouse. If people pirate out-of-print copies, under the assumption that the authors won't get royalties anyway, all that does it reduce retail sales, which reduces the manufacturing runs, which then reduces royalties.
People need to stop comparing out-of-print with out-of-stock. Most anti-DRM and anti-piracy arguments I hear involve only the authors and publishers. A proper anti-piracy argument should include the whole distribution infrastructure, no matter how many middle-men are involved or how inefficient it may be.
Complain about the middle-men and the inefficiencies in the distribution methods. Complain about DRM. Don't complain about copyrights. If a copyright allows me to copy my purchase however I like for my own use, then there's no problem.
Dammit, I'm tired of people trying to automate everything. Having trouble making your UI accessible? Why, just boot up some development software and let the computer do everything for you.
I'm glad that the field of interface design has become much more important over the years, but we still have a long, long way to go. Real interface designers are aware of issues such as tiny print, bad widget groups, color blindness, and alternative input devices. That's what we do.
Trusting technology to solve the problem isn't going to work. You need people who are aware of the issues and know how to plan for them. A recent example was Rare's new Banjo Kazooie game. The game is made for HDTVs, so naturally they made all the text so damn small people have a hard time reading it on SDTVs. Has anyone considered that even on an HDTV, the end user's eyes may not be good enough to read the text on a 27" screen from across the room? The programmers have their fancy DVI monitors for software testing, and don't think about these issues.
The screenshot from the article particularly annoys me. They made the scrollbars bigger. Big whoop! How about letting me toggle between different types of data-compatible widgets, or disabling parts of the interface I don't use frequently to clear up valuable real estate? People with disabilities want to be independent, but there are still people around to help set-up a proper working environment, so let people choose for themselves what is important, with the option to remember different setups and reverse changes.