With shows that show unrealistic use of technology sometimes you just have to use your imagination to fill in the gaps or realize that they are just taking creative liberties.
In the case of Independence day, do you really think that those scientists spent all of those years studying the alien ship and never came up with an interface between their computers and the alien one? And they probably would have studied the workings of the shield generators in depth. Of course for the benefit of not boring the audience he over simplifies by saying "I gave it a virus".
In other cases like the overused effect where you see someone sitting at a computer and words or images are being "projected" on the them and the wall - that, to me, is just a creative liberty and isn't really happening, it is just a way to show viewers that there is something going on besides someone sitting at a computer boringly typing away.
Of course lines like "They hacked my cookies" make me want to barf.
And for those that recall what got them in trouble a while back with Windows Media Player could have easily been solved by adding:
[_] Windows Media Player
to the installer and add/remove screen. But what did they do? They they got all snotty and created "Windows Reduced Media Edition", a "special" version of Windows completely without WMP (not an option - just none).
The answer is: They are assholes, idiots, lazy, in bed with Microsoft, or some combination thereof.
Personally I get left out of video sites all the time because I choose to use an older version of Windows (because I can). These sites will kindly tell me that they only "support" running on a PC with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Yet sites like Google Video work perfectly for me.
What really blows my mind are old sites that check your UA to make sure you are running "Netscape", although spoofing the UA in Firefox usually lets it work fine.
I follow the Firefox bad site reporter data at http://reporter.mozilla.org/app/ and it boggles my mind how many sites are like this.
And in other news the next version of Firefox will require the latest Internet Explorer to be installed to operate and the Linux and Mac versions will be discontinued.
NTFS alternate data stream? It's a good thing I still use Windows 95 that doesn't have any of those fancy shmancy features that can be exploited like that.
It's good to know I'm not alone. I actually use Windows 95 OSR2 as my main operating system also. And it is on relativily modern hardware too (Athlon XP2000+, 256megs RAM, 160gig HD, Voodoo 5 with 64 megs video ram, I even use USB flash sticks with it believe it or not)
Probably the best part about this version of Windows is that with a slight tweak I set it up so there is NO INTERNET EXPLORER at all!
Firefox 1.5 runs fairly decently on it, although I mostly use Mozilla / Seamonkey. (I even got OO.Org 2.0 to run on it)
I know when writing an application you have to draw the line somewhere as to what enviroment you can reasonably design for. I have been expecting Firefox and Seamonkey to eventually stop running under 95, but there are still many, many people out there that use Windows 98 and even ME.
I believe that Firefox's ability to run just about anywere is currently one of its major selling points. I really, really, hope that it is made available for Win9x again even if it is a seperately non Mozilla.org supported version.
The original Zip drives were really pretty nice. The SCSI and IDE 100 meg drives were relatively fast too (for the time). People remember those drives as being painfully slow because many people had the external versions that connected via the *parallel port* (shudder). They managed to get a lot of Zip drives pre-installed in to machines but then they came out with a Zip 250 meg drive and several other variations. Of course the newer media didn't work on the older drives, but the worst part was the old 100 meg disks worked slow as heck in the newer drives because it had to do something special to write to them properly. What I think really killed them eventually was that the Zip disks were very expensive and the prices never went down!
They really could have replaced the 1.44 floppy disk if they had tried hard enough. I still have my old blue iomega 100 SCSI zip drive chugging away but I don't use it as much any more now that USB flash drives are almost everywhere and can finally run on everything short of DOS.
My first thought was that there was no way anybody would actually use this format but Micrsoft has enough power to blackmail^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H convince enough web sites or application developers to use this format that eventually everyone would have to have this regardless if they wanted it or not.
And I don't beleive for one second that this is really "open". Microsoft would never do anything unless it benifited them somehow.
But the worst sites are on corporate Intranets or behind logins.
At work I am expected to use Microsoft Project Server Web Access. This archaic piece of trash requires IE because it uses ActiveX. The webby app we use to manage our Outlook/Exchange profile info only works in IE. Our Exchange web access e-mail only provides a crippled interface to anything other than IE.
I had to repeatedly e-mail certain folks when links with illegal backslashes showed up in links on the department web site. They finally fixed those but there are several apps on the site that require or claim to require IE. (What the hell: here
, here, , here and the system that we now have to use to get our pay checks says here (login required) that "Internet Explorer (version 5.5 or higher) is the only supported web browser for Employee Self Service. Using any other browser may affect your ability to gain access." It mostly works but the the help system requires IE.
Then the other day I am trying look up info on my home warranty and I find this part of their site: Aon Home Warranty
So anyway yes they exist. Yes, real people run in to them all the time. And the Firefox community needs to do something to fight back.
Re:That's _exactly_ what we need...
on
Explorer Destroyer
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
That is just pathetic - soon there will be banners "Using Windows - switch to Linux, you will like it better, and maybe we will let you in our website
There are already plenty of web sites that say they only work on IE using Windows and won't let you in. The other day I even saw one that explicitly and snobbishly said the only way they would "support" using a Mac was with Windows and IE loaded in VirtualPC.
Re:Annoyance as a marketing technique?
on
Explorer Destroyer
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
How many times have you come across a website which, in stead of giving you content, advised you to update your IE to 5.0 or higher?
I come across this kind of thing all the time. Way to often. And while *I* turn away from such sites, regular blow joe users will stop using whatever non IE-browser they may be using and "just use IE because everything works in IE". And it is damn near impossible to convince these people to not use IE.
It is high time to start fighting fire with fire (and Firefox!).
I don't see why people are getting so uptight about this. People are free to use their own judgment as to how to inform, warn, or outright block IE users. If these people want to design sites so they work in Mosacic and Netscape 2.0 they are free to do that too, but the web is moving on with or without them.
Come on people, IE is obsolete (not to mention evil). It needs to be left in the digital dust where it belongs. There is really no good reason to continue developing for that ancient archaic bug infested dll murdering browser.
Sure too many people are still using it. But if 90% of the world were still running Netscape 2.0 just because they didn't know any better, would you REALLY want to continue designing for that or just tell people that they need to get off their lazy butts and upgrade already?
IE is holding back the web and we need to take action!
My personal favorites were This is hot, Fox Fever, Infinite, and of course Wheee!
But with only a couple of exceptions I thought they were all very good and I think they should all be shown on TV.
Perhaps IFC could have a spot where they show all of the Firefox Flicks back to back? If TechTV were still alive (damn you evil comcast!) I know they would have gladly done something like that.
No, IE did exactly and preciceley what it was designed to do. Crush Netscape. And it did a fairly good job of that, there is nothing left of Netscape other than a web portal with that name owned by AOL.
It was never intended for one second to be usable - you just had to use it regardless if you wanted it or not. IE 4 and Win98 forced it on to the desktop (the desktop BECAME IE) and every other function would open IE rather than your default browser. So of course as far as browser applications went it was a total disaster but that didn't matter.
Bill got what he wanted so it was hardly a "blunder".
The point of this story is people blindly placing their trust in technology. People seem to have this strange idea that computers are infallible and anything that a computer tells them is always going to magically be 100% accurate.
They don't think for themselves any more, they never question the almighty computer. They throw away their pencil and paper, and rely entirely on their computer. And if the computer is wrong or not available these people may lead themselves right in to disaster. And the potential for this happening is increasing every day.
I can hear it now. Software vendors just love to support only the "one true operating system". I think the main thing keeping people porting software at all to MacOS was that it was very hard to tell users that they spent megabucks on a fancy system and it won't run their software. They can't just tell them to trash their Mac and get a PC so if money permits you port it Mac.
Well, now vendors are just going to tell these people "Please install Windows" and they won't feel guilty about it. After all the users don't have to throw anything away and are actually ADDING something to their system. And if they could afford that expensive Mac then they surly can afford a copy of Microsoft Windows. And with Apple fully supporting this now there is no excuse to defend against having to install Windows.
I hear all the folks that think this is cool because now they can run all of their Windows only games - but they should have been demanding that companies port to MacOS X. Now they will likely never see another game for MacOS X again now that they can be expected to "Just install Windows".
And I don't even want to think how this will affect the Web now that Macs can run that old obsolete piece of trash IE browser that so many moron web designers seem to expect people to have. "You want to browse our site using a Mac? Please install Windows and use IE 6!"
The more I think about it the more I think that if Microsoft ever provides official support for installing Windows natively on a Mac then it very likely will be the end of MacOS X and eventually Apple.
Why? Because in general developers want "one true" operating system to develop for, often religiously so. I have heard people tell Mac users to "just get a PC" to run popular Windows-only software, but that is not a realistic expectation. That would be asking the Mac user to throw away thousands of dollars of hardware, and is generally considered unreasonable.
If it ever becomes possible to easily install any version of Windows on a Mac in a manner that is supported by Microsoft, even if not by Apple, then these same people will demand that Mac users "just install Windows" to run their software. And they will consider that to be perfectly reasonable thing to do - they are adding something to they system and taking nothing away. They could afford an expensive Mac, so certainly they can afford to spend a few more buck for Microsoft Windows, right? And if it is running natively on the Mac rather than in VirtualPC developers will not worry that they might be making the users work in a crippled or limited environment.
Then in time no one will see the need to develop MacOS X applications any more and all Mac users will be forced to use Windows.
Apple will then be just another boring commodity PC maker like Dell or Gateway.
So let's please stop even thinking about running Windows on the Mac. It just isn't cool.
And also in the news, Microsoft is to create another "special" version of Windows to address South Korean antitrust concerns. This "special" version will be given a lobotomy and ride the short bus to school much like the European "Windows N" AKA "Windows Reduced Media Edition".
Other third party applications include very advanced technology called an "uninstaller" and have done so for years. This technology is so advanced that Microsoft as of yet is completely unable to replicate it or integrate it in to their Windows OS.
Uninstaller technology would give users and OEMs a choice of which software applications are installed with Windows. When asked to comment head of Microsoft marketing MS. Bob stated "We firmly believe that users do not need this functionality, any kind of choice is too complicated. Everyone should just use the software we provide them and depend on us." The interview was interruped by the defening sound of a compeditor getting crushed.
six primary editions of Vista and an additional two variations for Europe that do not include Windows Media Player
It would be SO much easier for Microsoft to just put Windows Media Player in the Add/Remove section of the regular versions of Windows Vista, and it would make many people happier too. (Programs that need it would then just check if it isn't installed and ask if the user wants to add it). The entire reason they are making entirely separate versions, of course, is just to be difficult.
Lippens said the user probably tried to access a real estate record display by pressing R-E-D, but accidentally typed R-E-R, which brought up an assessment program written in 1995. The program is no longer in use, and technology officials did not know it could be accessed.
And this is why you shouldn't make potentially modifiable live data available to just anyone. And why you need to audit and maintain any such programs very closely, which apparently they didn't. And then you still should audit the data because even an experience user can make a simple typo that throws everything off. Who knows what kind of people they had entering data.
They indicated this person wasn't supposed to be doing data entry but I get a never ending laugh out of how some folks would rather have every blow joe enter their own data rather than use an experienced data entry clerk. And then those same folks expect the data to be 100% correct!
Slashdot Mirror
Does this have anything to do with the return of Loud Howard? (I wonder?)
With shows that show unrealistic use of technology sometimes you just have to use your imagination to fill in the gaps or realize that they are just taking creative liberties.
In the case of Independence day, do you really think that those scientists spent all of those years studying the alien ship and never came up with an interface between their computers and the alien one? And they probably would have studied the workings of the shield generators in depth. Of course for the benefit of not boring the audience he over simplifies by saying "I gave it a virus".
In other cases like the overused effect where you see someone sitting at a computer and words or images are being "projected" on the them and the wall - that, to me, is just a creative liberty and isn't really happening, it is just a way to show viewers that there is something going on besides someone sitting at a computer boringly typing away.
Of course lines like "They hacked my cookies" make me want to barf.
And for those that recall what got them in trouble a while back with Windows Media Player could have easily been solved by adding:
[_] Windows Media Player
to the installer and add/remove screen. But what did they do? They they got all snotty and created "Windows Reduced Media Edition", a "special" version of Windows completely without WMP (not an option - just none).
The answer is: They are assholes, idiots, lazy, in bed with Microsoft, or some combination thereof.
Personally I get left out of video sites all the time because I choose to use an older version of Windows (because I can). These sites will kindly tell me that they only "support" running on a PC with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Yet sites like Google Video work perfectly for me.
What really blows my mind are old sites that check your UA to make sure you are running "Netscape", although spoofing the UA in Firefox usually lets it work fine.
I follow the Firefox bad site reporter data at http://reporter.mozilla.org/app/ and it boggles my mind how many sites are like this.
And in other news the next version of Firefox will require the latest Internet Explorer to be installed to operate and the Linux and Mac versions will be discontinued.
They already got to Netscape.
NTFS alternate data stream? It's a good thing I still use Windows 95 that doesn't have any of those fancy shmancy features that can be exploited like that.
What are these "friends" of which you speak?
They sound most interesting, where can I find one of those?
It's good to know I'm not alone. I actually use Windows 95 OSR2 as my main operating system also. And it is on relativily modern hardware too (Athlon XP2000+, 256megs RAM, 160gig HD, Voodoo 5 with 64 megs video ram, I even use USB flash sticks with it believe it or not)
Probably the best part about this version of Windows is that with a slight tweak I set it up so there is NO INTERNET EXPLORER at all!
Firefox 1.5 runs fairly decently on it, although I mostly use Mozilla / Seamonkey. (I even got OO.Org 2.0 to run on it)
I know when writing an application you have to draw the line somewhere as to what enviroment you can reasonably design for. I have been expecting Firefox and Seamonkey to eventually stop running under 95, but there are still many, many people out there that use Windows 98 and even ME.
I believe that Firefox's ability to run just about anywere is currently one of its major selling points. I really, really, hope that it is made available for Win9x again even if it is a seperately non Mozilla.org supported version.
The original Zip drives were really pretty nice. The SCSI and IDE 100 meg drives were relatively fast too (for the time). People remember those drives as being painfully slow because many people had the external versions that connected via the *parallel port* (shudder). They managed to get a lot of Zip drives pre-installed in to machines but then they came out with a Zip 250 meg drive and several other variations. Of course the newer media didn't work on the older drives, but the worst part was the old 100 meg disks worked slow as heck in the newer drives because it had to do something special to write to them properly. What I think really killed them eventually was that the Zip disks were very expensive and the prices never went down!
They really could have replaced the 1.44 floppy disk if they had tried hard enough. I still have my old blue iomega 100 SCSI zip drive chugging away but I don't use it as much any more now that USB flash drives are almost everywhere and can finally run on everything short of DOS.
My first thought was that there was no way anybody would actually use this format but Micrsoft has enough power to blackmail^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H convince enough web sites or application developers to use this format that eventually everyone would have to have this regardless if they wanted it or not.
And I don't beleive for one second that this is really "open". Microsoft would never do anything unless it benifited them somehow.
I think this was the site I was thinking of. (I go through a lot of these kinds of sites on the Mozilla Reporter)
You must not get out much on the web, especially in a corporate environment.
There are a list of some here: Sites that Make Mozilla Sad
And even more can be found here: Mozilla Reporter Database
But the worst sites are on corporate Intranets or behind logins.
At work I am expected to use Microsoft Project Server Web Access. This archaic piece of trash requires IE because it uses ActiveX. The webby app we use to manage our Outlook/Exchange profile info only works in IE. Our Exchange web access e-mail only provides a crippled interface to anything other than IE.
Then I get this thing in the e-mail about Oracles new web site with a link to a presentation here - but don't open this in Firefox or it will crash! that only works in IE.
I had to repeatedly e-mail certain folks when links with illegal backslashes showed up in links on the department web site. They finally fixed those but there are several apps on the site that require or claim to require IE. (What the hell: here , here, , here and the system that we now have to use to get our pay checks says here (login required) that "Internet Explorer (version 5.5 or higher) is the only supported web browser for Employee Self Service. Using any other browser may affect your ability to gain access." It mostly works but the the help system requires IE.
Then the other day I am trying look up info on my home warranty and I find this part of their site: Aon Home Warranty
So anyway yes they exist. Yes, real people run in to them all the time. And the Firefox community needs to do something to fight back.
There are already plenty of web sites that say they only work on IE using Windows and won't let you in. The other day I even saw one that explicitly and snobbishly said the only way they would "support" using a Mac was with Windows and IE loaded in VirtualPC.
I come across this kind of thing all the time. Way to often. And while *I* turn away from such sites, regular blow joe users will stop using whatever non IE-browser they may be using and "just use IE because everything works in IE". And it is damn near impossible to convince these people to not use IE.
It is high time to start fighting fire with fire (and Firefox!).
I don't see why people are getting so uptight about this. People are free to use their own judgment as to how to inform, warn, or outright block IE users. If these people want to design sites so they work in Mosacic and Netscape 2.0 they are free to do that too, but the web is moving on with or without them.
Come on people, IE is obsolete (not to mention evil). It needs to be left in the digital dust where it belongs. There is really no good reason to continue developing for that ancient archaic bug infested dll murdering browser.
Sure too many people are still using it. But if 90% of the world were still running Netscape 2.0 just because they didn't know any better, would you REALLY want to continue designing for that or just tell people that they need to get off their lazy butts and upgrade already?
IE is holding back the web and we need to take action!
My personal favorites were
This is hot, Fox Fever, Infinite, and of course Wheee!
But with only a couple of exceptions I thought they were all very good and I think they should all be shown on TV.
Perhaps IFC could have a spot where they show all of the Firefox Flicks back to back? If TechTV were still alive (damn you evil comcast!) I know they would have gladly done something like that.
No, IE did exactly and preciceley what it was designed to do. Crush Netscape. And it did a fairly good job of that, there is nothing left of Netscape other than a web portal with that name owned by AOL.
It was never intended for one second to be usable - you just had to use it regardless if you wanted it or not. IE 4 and Win98 forced it on to the desktop (the desktop BECAME IE) and every other function would open IE rather than your default browser. So of course as far as browser applications went it was a total disaster but that didn't matter.
Bill got what he wanted so it was hardly a "blunder".
The point of this story is people blindly placing their trust in technology. People seem to have this strange idea that computers are infallible and anything that a computer tells them is always going to magically be 100% accurate.
They don't think for themselves any more, they never question the almighty computer. They throw away their pencil and paper, and rely entirely on their computer. And if the computer is wrong or not available these people may lead themselves right in to disaster. And the potential for this happening is increasing every day.
I can hear it now. Software vendors just love to support only the "one true operating system". I think the main thing keeping people porting software at all to MacOS was that it was very hard to tell users that they spent megabucks on a fancy system and it won't run their software. They can't just tell them to trash their Mac and get a PC so if money permits you port it Mac.
Well, now vendors are just going to tell these people "Please install Windows" and they won't feel guilty about it. After all the users don't have to throw anything away and are actually ADDING something to their system. And if they could afford that expensive Mac then they surly can afford a copy of Microsoft Windows. And with Apple fully supporting this now there is no excuse to defend against having to install Windows.
I hear all the folks that think this is cool because now they can run all of their Windows only games - but they should have been demanding that companies port to MacOS X. Now they will likely never see another game for MacOS X again now that they can be expected to "Just install Windows".
And I don't even want to think how this will affect the Web now that Macs can run that old obsolete piece of trash IE browser that so many moron web designers seem to expect people to have. "You want to browse our site using a Mac? Please install Windows and use IE 6!"
Fortunately getting Windows to boot is still a hack, but I can just hear it now:
Customer: "When you will have an updated version of your software for Mac OSX Intel?"
Vendor: "We no longer support MacOS. You need to install Windows."
Customer: "But...!"
Vendor: "We no longer see any need to support MacOS. Just install Windows."
Customer: (turns in to a zombie and buys a copy of Windows).
Let's just hope this is never offically supported by Apple or Microsoft.
The more I think about it the more I think that if Microsoft ever provides official support for installing Windows natively on a Mac then it very likely will be the end of MacOS X and eventually Apple.
Why? Because in general developers want "one true" operating system to develop for, often religiously so. I have heard people tell Mac users to "just get a PC" to run popular Windows-only software, but that is not a realistic expectation. That would be asking the Mac user to throw away thousands of dollars of hardware, and is generally considered unreasonable.
If it ever becomes possible to easily install any version of Windows on a Mac in a manner that is supported by Microsoft, even if not by Apple, then these same people will demand that Mac users "just install Windows" to run their software. And they will consider that to be perfectly reasonable thing to do - they are adding something to they system and taking nothing away. They could afford an expensive Mac, so certainly they can afford to spend a few more buck for Microsoft Windows, right? And if it is running natively on the Mac rather than in VirtualPC developers will not worry that they might be making the users work in a crippled or limited environment.
Then in time no one will see the need to develop MacOS X applications any more and all Mac users will be forced to use Windows.
Apple will then be just another boring commodity PC maker like Dell or Gateway.
So let's please stop even thinking about running Windows on the Mac. It just isn't cool.
And also in the news, Microsoft is to create another "special" version of Windows to address South Korean antitrust concerns. This "special" version will be given a lobotomy and ride the short bus to school much like the European "Windows N" AKA "Windows Reduced Media Edition".
Other third party applications include very advanced technology called an "uninstaller" and have done so for years. This technology is so advanced that Microsoft as of yet is completely unable to replicate it or integrate it in to their Windows OS.
Uninstaller technology would give users and OEMs a choice of which software applications are installed with Windows. When asked to comment head of Microsoft marketing MS. Bob stated "We firmly believe that users do not need this functionality, any kind of choice is too complicated. Everyone should just use the software we provide them and depend on us." The interview was interruped by the defening sound of a compeditor getting crushed.
It would be SO much easier for Microsoft to just put Windows Media Player in the Add/Remove section of the regular versions of Windows Vista, and it would make many people happier too. (Programs that need it would then just check if it isn't installed and ask if the user wants to add it). The entire reason they are making entirely separate versions, of course, is just to be difficult.
Lippens said the user probably tried to access a real estate record display by pressing R-E-D, but accidentally typed R-E-R, which brought up an assessment program written in 1995. The program is no longer in use, and technology officials did not know it could be accessed.
And this is why you shouldn't make potentially modifiable live data available to just anyone. And why you need to audit and maintain any such programs very closely, which apparently they didn't. And then you still should audit the data because even an experience user can make a simple typo that throws everything off. Who knows what kind of people they had entering data.
They indicated this person wasn't supposed to be doing data entry but I get a never ending laugh out of how some folks would rather have every blow joe enter their own data rather than use an experienced data entry clerk. And then those same folks expect the data to be 100% correct!
To err is human, but to really foul things up takes a computer.
And to make a total disastrous mess takes a computer _operated_ by a human.