Get rid of the DRM and I'll likely buy thousands of their movies. Keep it and I'll buy none until such time as it's broken anyway. Keeps me from investing money in their tech when it's a new release which is when they most need the money.
Yet another minor issue with Opera 9. The color dropdown on http://www.tubmonkey.com/viewProduct.html/productI d/388 and similar pages doesn't show the background image in Opera as I'd expect it should, and it does in Firefox. Not a serious issue but it exists. IE messes it up too. I haven't had a chance to try it in Safari yet.
Is there any rule that the browser isn't supposed to allow dropdowns to be styled?
I've seen sites that were pretty unusable without CSS though. Brilliant types that insert important text with CSS and things like that or just have the default layout so weird that without the CSS it doesn't make any sense. It seems hard to manage such a thing but I have seen sites do it.
Long ago when HTML was new I planned out a multiple file method of webpage design that included a mapping file that would gather data from one resource, a template from another, a style from a third, and code, graphics, etc as needed from their own resources. I still think that kind of sepperation would be damn handy. XML didn't exist yet but I was using a custom HTML-like syntax to layout each file. It seems pretty silly to be spending so much effort on templating on the server-side when doing it my way would let users download a pure data stream they could work with in alternate ways.
True, I never really used my mini-itx boards' pci slots though. Now and then for wireless but nothing else. Built-in wireless and bluetooth would be cool too. I know.. how much can they cram into that little bitty space. I'd like to find out if you can buy the boards without external connectors too as I'd rather have internal connectors so that it'd be neater when building into tiny systems.
I probably shouldn't use any none-hex colors as it's an easy way to open yourself to color issues. To much laziness on my part. The lack of recognition of transparent as an allowed color irks me a bit though.
More than one right answer to a problem is usually the case with bugs in stuff like this. I'll have to figure out if I can do something in such a way as to be more clear of my intent I guess. Still frustrating by the time you debug many such problems across different browsers and browser versions. Still, IMO at least, I think it should be obvious that if both left and right margins are auto that centering was the intent. I'm still not sure why CSS doesn't just have an alignment property though. It'd seem such an often used thing to warrant a clear method of usage.
True mostly, but not practical for text-based browsers, spiders, etc which are still browsers of a type. Sites should use CSS but be usable for these browsers too.
For small systems that don't need a lot of power I like the form factor, low power usage, and low heat (and fan noise) of the Via proessors. They're great for shoving into a small space or for use where you just don't want noise.
I wish they could work with Nvidia to come up with a built-in GPU that had enough kick to play decent 3D games on. My 6800 card is almost as big as, and certainly louder, than my mini-itx mobos and is definately bigger than the nano-itx boards I'm waiting for. I really want a powerful system, including a killer GPU, that can fit into a size similar to the Mac Mini (which sadly also has a weak GPU).
Using Javascript is fine but a site should work without it whenever possible. The same for cookies, Java, Flash, CSS, etc. I use most of these but I go out of my way to make sure my website's will work without them. So long as it tries to work without these then I'm all for using them as needed to provide a good experience.
I think some people are insane with their complaining about cookies. Cookies are essentially harmless and aren't at all needed by website's to track you. Unless you switch IP addresses between every request I'm tracking you. I know where you live, where you're browsing on any of my websites (or associated websites), know when your looking, and unless you've hidden the details I know what platform and browser you're using and often what spyware you're infected with. None of this requires cookies. All that info is easy to get. What is more effort is keeping track of your session data properly if you don't use cookies. It's a real pain because it forces me to either track you by IP or to pass around some stupid session variable.
Took about 10 min to fix since it was all minor. I had to leave the IE check in for stylesheets but I took that out and tested and it still behaves the same way.
I'm not claiming that it's not a bug in my coding but I'd like to know for sure if it's my bug or a bug in Opera and Safari and I've yet to find a fix. My impression from the specs is that margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; is the proper way to center an element but there are always little ifs and buts involved. It does work for other elements on the pages though which is what is weird.
A valid statement but the fact is that even if I remove the code causing all those errors the page doesn't render as expected when using auto margins. That and XHTML Strict has some retarded factors such as requiring form input elements be in a block containing tag of some sort and not allowing target attributes on links. Those things aren't going to validate but will render just fine.
As you can see, if you look, fixing those minor errors had no effect whatsoever. The CSS also validates with the exception of CSS3 and browser-specific features. If setting element opacity is causing a browser to misalign an element then they have a problem even if they don't support the opacity attribute.
Opera 8 renders things badly in my experience but Opera 9 does a very good job and looks almost identical to Safari. Firefox renders things more as I expect than Safari or Opera but I'm not sure which browser has the bugs. Still, those bugs are almost gone in the most recent releases of each so I'm pretty happy. Now if we could just do something about IE. C'mon IE7 people - PLEASE be standards compliant. Us developers would love to see IE pass ACID2.
When possible these things should work in quirks mode but strict mode should require perfection. Without requiring perfection it's really hard to know if there is a bug in your website's code. I'd love to see a CSS debugger included in browsers similar to Javascript debuggers..
My website, Tub Monkey, mostly looks right in Safari and Opera 9 but has a lingering bug I've yet to figure out that neither centers the main page body in the expected way as Firefox and even IE does. From reading the CSS2 spec I'm pretty sure I'm doing it right by using auto margins so I'm not sure why it doesn't work. I've asked in Safari and Opera forums for help but have never had any suggestions and I've had no feedback from submiting the site as having a browser bug to the browser makers.
It's pretty stupid that every game I buy I have to find, download, and install a no cd crack. This opens me up to security issues just so that I can play my game. This issue alone encourages me to just download the already cracked versions of the games or to avoid the problem altogether by just not playing games very much. For non-hardcore gamers this kind of thing is enough to keep us from buying and playing games we might otherwise be interested in.
It seems a lossing fight for these companies. The people most likely to make illegal copies of programs are the same people that know how to find cracks. I've never had a game I couldn't quickly find a crack for but it's still a pain. The people who can't find the cracks are the ones most likely to be turned off to buying the games because of these issues.
I'm getting there now but it's been a long haul. My point being that the hardship involved is holding people back from contributing everything they otherwise could. While this does filter out some bad ideas it also filters out a lot of good ideas. As a society I think this isn't a good thing. I'm not saying we should give a million dollars in resources to everyone to play with but making it easier for non business people to hook up with investors and business partners that aren't going to rip them off etc should be easier. Making all this easier I think is a huge chance in itself for some smart investor to make money.
Make it so people can easily submit a general idea to you with no risk of being ripped off or being cut out of the deal and get feedback and some quick money with some good follow-up as to writing up the business plan and connecting with seed and angel investors. Someone that can be sort of a trustworthy business partner for geeks and other non business savvy people that have good ideas. All the resources exist now but just aren't that easy for the non-savvy to figure out. It should be as easy as going into H&R Block to get your taxes done at least.
Umm. I had the open source movement long before IBM started contributing. It's not that IBM is bad but they are milking open source for their own benefit and not vice versa. Google likewise. They are contributing, which is good, but they're buying the innovation they need for their own purpose by contributing.
A job and stock are fine but they aren't going to make the world a better place. They maintain the status quo. Innovation is needed to improve the human condition and improving the human condition is the only way for the species to survive over time as, as with anything, maintaining the status quo is really a slow decent towards failure.
Innovation is evolution at work. Evolution sucks for those that get replaced but in the long run it is the key to survival.
Exactly. If you don't have money your innovations aren't going to go anywhere and that kills the vast majority of innovation before it has the chance to do anything for anybody. Sure if you work 100 hours a week and get out there and really sale your idea you can get somewhere with just a good idea but most people can't do that. So great ideas die on the vine.
You either need money or need to know someone with money or just happen to get lucky to get those innovations to go somewhere. Given $50,000 to work with I could return at least $500,000 within the year just from minor innovations I have but getting that start-up capital is the hard part. Seed investments are always possible but take a lot of effort in itself which takes away from the time you can spend on your innovation. The best plan is to find a friend with some business savvy to partner with you and let them work on your investment money while you work on the tech but that means finding the right person for that role still.
You may become wealthy if you start off at least middle class or work for years towards that goal but meanwhile you have to struggle so that many innovations that could have been are wasted. If you're struggling to feed yourself and keep a roof over your head you're not going to have much time and money to produce wonderful new things.
I'm the kind of person, ie a geek, that produces innovations with nearly every breath almost none of them are getting to people because of lack of time and money. I'm improving as I've dragged myself up to lower middle class and therefore have more time and money than I used to but I don't have nearly as many good ideas as I did when I was younger. If I'd had a sponsor back then I could have changed the world. Now I'd just be happy to make it to upper middle class, raise my family, make a couple minor contributions to the world, and die a somewhat defeated man.
Sex is bad. Before I discovered girls I was much more innovative. Before I got caught in the expense of a significant other and all that goes with that (house, kids, pets, yada yada yada) I could pour a lot more of my limited resources into innovation. I think there is a good reason great innovators aren't often family men. Save yourself and just hang out with the $20 whores in Tijuana instead.;)
Is it still innovation if your innovation never gets used by anybody? I innovate ideas daily but I don't have the money to get 99.9% of them out there while I watch wealthy companies continue to put out crap products that lack innovation. Innovations nobody knows about may as well not exist for all the difference it makes.
I agree. Money will be an important factor in this as A) not being wealthy makes it hard to innovate and B) those with wealth will use it to keep the market and legal system working to their advantage. Eventually this dam will break but it'll take a while. Decades probably.
As always, big business and big government is the enemy of innovation.
I haven't yet decided if I'll opensource the system or not. I'm leaning towards opensourcing the client portion (the Java applet) but licensing the server software out. Or maybe I'll go with the new GPL if it protects my rights on software that is used as a service rather than distributed.
I've done a few test runs which was enough to let me know I had to look into getting a multi-TB server farm before I could open it to the public. I've been trying to get investors for that (it costs around $250/mo per TB of server space) but looks like Google is going to kill my business plan.
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Get rid of the DRM and I'll likely buy thousands of their movies. Keep it and I'll buy none until such time as it's broken anyway. Keeps me from investing money in their tech when it's a new release which is when they most need the money.
Yet another minor issue with Opera 9. The color dropdown on http://www.tubmonkey.com/viewProduct.html/productI d/388 and similar pages doesn't show the background image in Opera as I'd expect it should, and it does in Firefox. Not a serious issue but it exists. IE messes it up too. I haven't had a chance to try it in Safari yet.
Is there any rule that the browser isn't supposed to allow dropdowns to be styled?
Oddly if I set the mainBlock to static or relative it positions correctly but losses the background of the block.
I'd like to see text count as an entity too. It's silly to need to nest everything in span's.
I've seen sites that were pretty unusable without CSS though. Brilliant types that insert important text with CSS and things like that or just have the default layout so weird that without the CSS it doesn't make any sense. It seems hard to manage such a thing but I have seen sites do it.
Long ago when HTML was new I planned out a multiple file method of webpage design that included a mapping file that would gather data from one resource, a template from another, a style from a third, and code, graphics, etc as needed from their own resources. I still think that kind of sepperation would be damn handy. XML didn't exist yet but I was using a custom HTML-like syntax to layout each file. It seems pretty silly to be spending so much effort on templating on the server-side when doing it my way would let users download a pure data stream they could work with in alternate ways.
True, I never really used my mini-itx boards' pci slots though. Now and then for wireless but nothing else. Built-in wireless and bluetooth would be cool too. I know.. how much can they cram into that little bitty space. I'd like to find out if you can buy the boards without external connectors too as I'd rather have internal connectors so that it'd be neater when building into tiny systems.
How do you get 10? It tells me 5.
I probably shouldn't use any none-hex colors as it's an easy way to open yourself to color issues. To much laziness on my part. The lack of recognition of transparent as an allowed color irks me a bit though.
More than one right answer to a problem is usually the case with bugs in stuff like this. I'll have to figure out if I can do something in such a way as to be more clear of my intent I guess. Still frustrating by the time you debug many such problems across different browsers and browser versions. Still, IMO at least, I think it should be obvious that if both left and right margins are auto that centering was the intent. I'm still not sure why CSS doesn't just have an alignment property though. It'd seem such an often used thing to warrant a clear method of usage.
True mostly, but not practical for text-based browsers, spiders, etc which are still browsers of a type. Sites should use CSS but be usable for these browsers too.
For small systems that don't need a lot of power I like the form factor, low power usage, and low heat (and fan noise) of the Via proessors. They're great for shoving into a small space or for use where you just don't want noise.
I wish they could work with Nvidia to come up with a built-in GPU that had enough kick to play decent 3D games on. My 6800 card is almost as big as, and certainly louder, than my mini-itx mobos and is definately bigger than the nano-itx boards I'm waiting for. I really want a powerful system, including a killer GPU, that can fit into a size similar to the Mac Mini (which sadly also has a weak GPU).
Using Javascript is fine but a site should work without it whenever possible. The same for cookies, Java, Flash, CSS, etc. I use most of these but I go out of my way to make sure my website's will work without them. So long as it tries to work without these then I'm all for using them as needed to provide a good experience.
I think some people are insane with their complaining about cookies. Cookies are essentially harmless and aren't at all needed by website's to track you. Unless you switch IP addresses between every request I'm tracking you. I know where you live, where you're browsing on any of my websites (or associated websites), know when your looking, and unless you've hidden the details I know what platform and browser you're using and often what spyware you're infected with. None of this requires cookies. All that info is easy to get. What is more effort is keeping track of your session data properly if you don't use cookies. It's a real pain because it forces me to either track you by IP or to pass around some stupid session variable.
Took about 10 min to fix since it was all minor. I had to leave the IE check in for stylesheets but I took that out and tested and it still behaves the same way.
I'm not claiming that it's not a bug in my coding but I'd like to know for sure if it's my bug or a bug in Opera and Safari and I've yet to find a fix. My impression from the specs is that margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; is the proper way to center an element but there are always little ifs and buts involved. It does work for other elements on the pages though which is what is weird.
A valid statement but the fact is that even if I remove the code causing all those errors the page doesn't render as expected when using auto margins. That and XHTML Strict has some retarded factors such as requiring form input elements be in a block containing tag of some sort and not allowing target attributes on links. Those things aren't going to validate but will render just fine.
As you can see, if you look, fixing those minor errors had no effect whatsoever. The CSS also validates with the exception of CSS3 and browser-specific features. If setting element opacity is causing a browser to misalign an element then they have a problem even if they don't support the opacity attribute.
Opera 8 renders things badly in my experience but Opera 9 does a very good job and looks almost identical to Safari. Firefox renders things more as I expect than Safari or Opera but I'm not sure which browser has the bugs. Still, those bugs are almost gone in the most recent releases of each so I'm pretty happy. Now if we could just do something about IE. C'mon IE7 people - PLEASE be standards compliant. Us developers would love to see IE pass ACID2.
When possible these things should work in quirks mode but strict mode should require perfection. Without requiring perfection it's really hard to know if there is a bug in your website's code. I'd love to see a CSS debugger included in browsers similar to Javascript debuggers..
My website, Tub Monkey, mostly looks right in Safari and Opera 9 but has a lingering bug I've yet to figure out that neither centers the main page body in the expected way as Firefox and even IE does. From reading the CSS2 spec I'm pretty sure I'm doing it right by using auto margins so I'm not sure why it doesn't work. I've asked in Safari and Opera forums for help but have never had any suggestions and I've had no feedback from submiting the site as having a browser bug to the browser makers.
Any ideas?
It's pretty stupid that every game I buy I have to find, download, and install a no cd crack. This opens me up to security issues just so that I can play my game. This issue alone encourages me to just download the already cracked versions of the games or to avoid the problem altogether by just not playing games very much. For non-hardcore gamers this kind of thing is enough to keep us from buying and playing games we might otherwise be interested in.
It seems a lossing fight for these companies. The people most likely to make illegal copies of programs are the same people that know how to find cracks. I've never had a game I couldn't quickly find a crack for but it's still a pain. The people who can't find the cracks are the ones most likely to be turned off to buying the games because of these issues.
I'm getting there now but it's been a long haul. My point being that the hardship involved is holding people back from contributing everything they otherwise could. While this does filter out some bad ideas it also filters out a lot of good ideas. As a society I think this isn't a good thing. I'm not saying we should give a million dollars in resources to everyone to play with but making it easier for non business people to hook up with investors and business partners that aren't going to rip them off etc should be easier. Making all this easier I think is a huge chance in itself for some smart investor to make money.
Make it so people can easily submit a general idea to you with no risk of being ripped off or being cut out of the deal and get feedback and some quick money with some good follow-up as to writing up the business plan and connecting with seed and angel investors. Someone that can be sort of a trustworthy business partner for geeks and other non business savvy people that have good ideas. All the resources exist now but just aren't that easy for the non-savvy to figure out. It should be as easy as going into H&R Block to get your taxes done at least.
Umm. I had the open source movement long before IBM started contributing. It's not that IBM is bad but they are milking open source for their own benefit and not vice versa. Google likewise. They are contributing, which is good, but they're buying the innovation they need for their own purpose by contributing.
A job and stock are fine but they aren't going to make the world a better place. They maintain the status quo. Innovation is needed to improve the human condition and improving the human condition is the only way for the species to survive over time as, as with anything, maintaining the status quo is really a slow decent towards failure.
Innovation is evolution at work. Evolution sucks for those that get replaced but in the long run it is the key to survival.
Exactly. If you don't have money your innovations aren't going to go anywhere and that kills the vast majority of innovation before it has the chance to do anything for anybody. Sure if you work 100 hours a week and get out there and really sale your idea you can get somewhere with just a good idea but most people can't do that. So great ideas die on the vine.
You either need money or need to know someone with money or just happen to get lucky to get those innovations to go somewhere. Given $50,000 to work with I could return at least $500,000 within the year just from minor innovations I have but getting that start-up capital is the hard part. Seed investments are always possible but take a lot of effort in itself which takes away from the time you can spend on your innovation. The best plan is to find a friend with some business savvy to partner with you and let them work on your investment money while you work on the tech but that means finding the right person for that role still.
You may become wealthy if you start off at least middle class or work for years towards that goal but meanwhile you have to struggle so that many innovations that could have been are wasted. If you're struggling to feed yourself and keep a roof over your head you're not going to have much time and money to produce wonderful new things.
;)
I'm the kind of person, ie a geek, that produces innovations with nearly every breath almost none of them are getting to people because of lack of time and money. I'm improving as I've dragged myself up to lower middle class and therefore have more time and money than I used to but I don't have nearly as many good ideas as I did when I was younger. If I'd had a sponsor back then I could have changed the world. Now I'd just be happy to make it to upper middle class, raise my family, make a couple minor contributions to the world, and die a somewhat defeated man.
Sex is bad. Before I discovered girls I was much more innovative. Before I got caught in the expense of a significant other and all that goes with that (house, kids, pets, yada yada yada) I could pour a lot more of my limited resources into innovation. I think there is a good reason great innovators aren't often family men. Save yourself and just hang out with the $20 whores in Tijuana instead.
Is it still innovation if your innovation never gets used by anybody? I innovate ideas daily but I don't have the money to get 99.9% of them out there while I watch wealthy companies continue to put out crap products that lack innovation. Innovations nobody knows about may as well not exist for all the difference it makes.
I agree. Money will be an important factor in this as A) not being wealthy makes it hard to innovate and B) those with wealth will use it to keep the market and legal system working to their advantage. Eventually this dam will break but it'll take a while. Decades probably.
As always, big business and big government is the enemy of innovation.
I haven't yet decided if I'll opensource the system or not. I'm leaning towards opensourcing the client portion (the Java applet) but licensing the server software out. Or maybe I'll go with the new GPL if it protects my rights on software that is used as a service rather than distributed.
I've done a few test runs which was enough to let me know I had to look into getting a multi-TB server farm before I could open it to the public. I've been trying to get investors for that (it costs around $250/mo per TB of server space) but looks like Google is going to kill my business plan.
Java applets can do darn near anything.
It still sounds like you enjoyed it largely for the socializing. As I said, game play is very weak but socializing is the reason most people play.