You conveniently have not read the other posts of mine in this thread, where I mention I was in the process of figuring out where the navigational problem was, be it on the MBTA's end or mine (and if it was on my end, figuring out how to fix it) before they yanked the new site away and put the old site back up. I discovered Mac Daniel's comment as this was all going down, and I jumped all over it out of frustration and annoyance.
But hey, thanks for playing.
and your "admin" (which happens to be a HUGE major blog hosting site)
The administrator of the server that hosts my site and the pictures I display off it, including the dozen full-size screenshots of the website as I found it, would probably not classify her host as a huge major blog hosting site. And she would certainly not appreciate any bandwidth overage bills.
Actually, the post linked here on Slashdot was the second post in this ongoing drama. The first post was an annoyed look at how the new website was rendered on my home XP box running Opera. It featured links to about 10 or 12 full-size screenshots of the drop-down menus all staying open and preventing me from accessing other parts of the UI. I wasn't actually ranting with a full head of steam at that point; I was just cranky at the T. I've seen the MBTA's quality steadily decline in the past 10 years, devolving into a transit system plagued with cost overruns, maintenance issues, horrible customer service and an amazingly botched roll-out of a brand new smart-card fare system. For example, on its first day of official use, the networked vending machines refused "CharlieCards" to those paying with credit or debit cards -- but charged them anyway. There were reports of folks trying three or four times to purchase a CharlieCard, and getting charged three or four times in quick succession. It's a minor inconvenience if you're trying to purchase one or two rides, but some of these people were buying monthly passes at around $40 a pop or higher, and a few days before the first of the month when rent's due.
Boston deserves better, especially since we're due for a fare increase at the end of the month. Given this stellar track record, finding that the T's brand-new website that refused to play well with my browser (or is it the other way around?) wasn't much of a surprise, but a real annoyance. I was worried that if the site wasn't working correctly on my browser, how many other people were having troubles and had any disabled users encountered accessibility problems with the UI too?
I got responses from Opera users on other platforms who said they weren't having problems, and I did get one response from a blind person using a screen reader who said sie could use the site actually better than expected, but a text-only or lite version would have been a better alternative.
Mac Daniel of the Boston Globe picked up on the post after it was featured on Universal Hub, and posted a quick one-liner in his "Starts & Stops" MBTA/Boston travel blog. He's not a T employee, he's not a representative of the MBTA, he's a contributing writer for the newspaper and I've been reading his stuff for quite some time now. The post quoted at the top of the comments was a knee-jerk, heated reaction to his knee-jerk, one-shot reaction, written without counting to ten. I'd been trying that day to figure out the problem between my browser and the new website, because I really wanted to get the site to render properly (and if it was a problem on my end, fix it up right.)
Once the T site reverted to its previous version I couldn't continue to play around with it, which was frustrating, and Mac's comment unfortunately just pushed the right buttons at the wrong time. I flew off the handle and I freely admit that. Who hasn't done similar in times of annoyance? I hadn't wanted to start a browser war when I was pointing out the problems I was having with the T site, but the curt "Don't use Opera" dismissal stuck in my craw and we all know how much fun it is when your craw has something stuck in it.
Suffice to say, however, the subsequent snowball effect has been a major ego check right into the boards, and yesterday morning I had a heapin' helping of a Morning After Remorse along with my breakfast. So it goes. You shoots your mouth off, you deal with the cleanup. So I'm cleaning up, making my peace, etc.
I didn't think the giant cartoon fight cloud would've reached Slashdot, but some of the points being raised right now in the midst of the typical digressions, AC shenanigans and car metaphors are pretty valid. How far should a web developer go in the name of compatibility? What standards should web design be held to? What constitutes a compliant web browser if W3C and MSIE's design standards don't get along? Is the MBTA, as a government agency, beholden t
The thing is, I hadn't made any major script-breaking adjustments to the browser's configuration. No custom Javascript files or style sheets, no widgets, none of that. And when I fully uninstalled and did a clean, fresh install, with defaults in place, I still saw the same problem.
BTW Having not seen the web site with Opera, what was not working?
The top menu nav bars all stayed dropped down on every page, obscuring other parts of the UI (bus schedule menu toggles, that kind of thing.) Couldn't click on any of the menu options, it'd just make the drop-down menu in question turn white. Looked like some crazy Javascript error. That's all.
I'm derspatchel. I took the entries and the pictures out of circulation. I don't need the comments and my admin doesn't need the bandwidth overages. I kept saying the last thing I wanted to do was start a goddamn browser war, but it looks as if I didn't really have any choice in that matter. I kicked a rock and it rolled downhill from there.
My original complaint was written as I was viewing the revamped website, and just couldn't believe the nav problem I had seen. Nearly half a million dollars went into the redesign and it seemed like they'd really goofed. The second complaint was written when Mac Daniel threw a little jab in his writeup on the debacle, while I was sussing out the nav problem with Ron Newman. Is it a coding thing? Is it an OS thing? Is it a configuration thing? Is it an enduser thing? I dunno. Then the MBTA reverted to the previous version so I couldn't play around with it any further. And then my knee-jerk reaction to Mac's knee-jerk reaction just led to more knee-jerk reactions. Okay, I gotta stop typing 'knee-jerk' because it's beginning to look weird.
I stand by my opinion that if a browser is in current development and it's W3C compliant, then it should by all rights be considered a supportable browser and a browser to be supported. That's all. If I had been crying that the MBTA site wasn't viewable on Netscape Navigator 4.0, say, then I could see why there'd be a problem and why the advice to change browsers would come pouring in.
All I wanted was to be able to use the website with a current, up-to-date, standards-compliant web browser. I also said I'd be happy to use another supported browser to view it, but it would be nice if I didn't have to, and it'd be much nicer if I weren't told to.
Today our player professions by percent of masters is significantly skewed to the core combat professions as a very small proportion of our player (less than 1% of players) choose to master the professions of Bio Engineer or Creature Handler. For this reason, we are putting the focus where the majority of our players are putting their game-play investment -- on the core profession paths.
Of course nobody's playing Creature Handlers, because they've been broken beyond usefulness. And for SOE to promise new tamable creatures in the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion, a much-needed shot in the arm as far as creature handler content goes, and sell this expansion to creature handlers on those merits... well, this revamp has been announced at precisely the worst time possible for the 18 people left playing CH.
Sad, really, cause my fondest memories of the game involve running around with baby rancors and stuff.
You may thing this is true, but my experience would be different. They recently added voice into EQ: things that other players can trigger like "Follow me" and "Run."
My wife was playing with that particular "feature" and after about 5 seconds, I told her that if she didn't turn that off, I would. It was the most annoying thing.
Woe be unto those in a Diablo2 game when several players discover the number pad quotes for the first time...
Time to die! Time... to... die! These are for you. For you. A gift for you. Oops. Thank you! Thanks. Thank you! Thanks. Thank you! Thanks.
I prefer to play MMORPGs silently these days, anyway. Nobody's done anything useful with audio cues recently so it doesn't matter.
So...what you're saying is that Verizon is a cybersquatter (as they obviously have no intention of ridiculing themselves with a "...sucks" site, their purpose in registering it is obviously to prevent someone else from using it)?
Several companies have already done this. After a particularly nasty episode with non-functioning ATMs, branches that closed way too early, and a paycheck what Needed Depositing, I found out that citizensbanksucks.com had already been taken by, you guessed it, Citizens Bank. Guess they feel that acquiring the name instead of playing Rock'em Sock'em Lawyers makes them look better or something.
Funny, though -- in their haste to get that.com registered, they missed.net and.org... (have at 'em!)
Personally, I think that the trend will move towards "-blows" as the Suffix of Choice for naysayers. If we can change trendy prefixes at the drop of a hat (i-, e-, x-...) why not angry suffixes? -blows, -bites, -chews... and all with the same great oral fixation we've come to know and love from -sucks. Grab those domains now, kids!
Sim and various construction-like games seem to be a true timesuck for me. Countless nights were spent staying up with SimCity 2000 or Transport Tycoon, or, more recently, Roller Coaster Tycoon (which appears to have been the biggest timewaster of 'em all for me.) There's just something inherently fascinating about constructing a little model (city, amusement park, transit system, whatever) and then watching it go through its paces. I'd almost liken it to a good coding session (constructing your program and watching it go through its paces) if it didn't sound so inherently Katzish.
However, in terms of total addictiveness and true timewasting, Civilization wins, hands-down. I could get stuck for hours with that game. There was a time during the summer of 1994 when there was always (and I stress always, it was indeed 24/7) somebody in the house I hung out at playing Civilization or DOOM, but Civ was just a bit more interesting for other people to sit around and watch, too. Someone learned the buy-as-building-switch-to-military-unit trick, we all learned the trick. Someone decided it'd be cool to use the Great Wall (and later the UN) to mercilessly spank the computer and still make peace every other turn, we all tried it. It was pretty interesting, to say the least. Civ 2 had the same tenacious addictiveness, but somehow it just didn't feel the same as the VGA graphics of Civ 1. Even just building your castle was more fun than watching your 'throne room' go up.
I wonder why Katz is requesting "such archives be created" when there are probably quite a bit of web sites and Usenet groups and BBSes with at least one portion of their gaming content devoted to older games or, at the very least, sporadic nostalgia threads. Shrug. At least it gives Slashdot something fun to read this morning.
Would running the text through a text-to-speech program constitute 'reading aloud'? Suddenly there's a whole new area of accessibility to deal with. You don't want to disenfranchise any vision-impaired users, would you?
Bah. Whatever. This is a stupid restriction and all involved know it. How could they possibly hope to enforce it? Voice-activated microphones in an e-book unit? Please.
I suggest getting a group of 20 or so together with Glassbook, go up in front of Adobe's corporate HQ, and just have a nice, happy reading of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Bring some cocoa or tea, maybe a few folding chairs, make a nice event out of it. What could they possibly do to you in those circumstances? Yell at you to just shut up?! "Freedom of speech!" "Not with our material!" "We memorized it! So there!"
The insanity goes on and on...
The fact they swiped the text from Project Gutenberg is just ironically nasty. May it end up being self-defeating. I personally think e-books in their current evolutionary "one person, one book, don't lend it, don't share it" path are abominable and, hopefully, a terrible financial casualty for those involved.
The rule seems to be if the song is funny, it must be by the Blood Hound Gang. If it has a "jam" feel to it, it must be a Phish song. One of my favorite things I've found on Napster, The Gourds, a bluegrass band covering Snoop Dog's "Gin and Juice" is labeled as Phish most of the time.
Too true. In fact, I've tried suggesting a new motto to Napster: "That's Not Phish" Sadly, they've yet to come to their senses and adopt it.
What really got my goat was the other day I was at Best Buy shoppin' for movies on VHS. One or two titles to keep me amused for a while, nothing big. They've recently begun to shrink their VHS section while focusing more and more on DVD. I can understand that; DVD's quite cool. But I am limited at the moment to a VHS player.
Anyway, after several minutes of perusing the one entire aisle they had set up for VHS tapes, I made the mistake of asking a Helpful Salesdroid if they had any special section for letterboxed releases on VHS (yes, a futile question, but I really just wanted to know if they sold any letterboxed films on VHS.) The Salesdroid blinked and replied, "But that's what DVD is for."
Gee, thanks, but no thanks. What really irked me was that it seemed as if the Salesdroid was trying to get me to upgrade my purchase of one or two videotapes into a full-blown DVD player and some DVD releases as well. It's like going to the store to buy some chewing gum and having the salesdroid say "Why would you want chewing gum when you could have a full homecooked meal on this new Amana range?" I mean, really.
Actually, the Game Genie was a third-party peripheral and when it was first introduced, Nintendo fought real hard to keep it from being sold. Usual company line about the missing "Seal of Approval", violating the integrity of the games, yadda yadda yadda.
I'm not sure on this, but I bet Nintendo had their own Game Genie-like product in the pipeline, and it irked them to see a third-party developer do something with it first. Shrug. Don't know why they calmed down, though.
I did a Slackware floppy install using nothing but AOL trial disks! This was, of course, back in the day before they started sending out CDs (and now in wasteful DVD-like packaging, too) and I was more than thrilled to actually find a use for all them lil' floppies.
The entire point of this story is that this guy has a sweet box? Or is there something akin to "news" in here?
Well, Linux isn't 'officially' supported in the Alpha GS series. That this guy was able to get it working and on 31 of the 32 processors is pretty interesting and shows folks it can be done.
Or would you be satisfied with more Jon Katz ramblings? Yammering on about "Shadowrunner" hardly strikes me as "newsworthy", but YMMV...
Back in 1997 I registered a domain for myself using what was then the only game in town. As the 2-year renewal date approached in 1999, I had switched ISPs and addresses, both email and physical, several times. Every attempt I made to contact Network Solutions regarding the change in Billing Contact information failed. Sending email from another address would only return me an autoreply chiding me for using the wrong email. I exhausted my patience waiting on the phone for an actual human to talk to, and even the Send-Them-A-Letter-On-Company-Letterhead trick (what company letterhead? It was a personal domain for personal use, fercryingoutloud) didn't work. So I merely decided to wait it out.
The domain got put on hold for non-payment (I wasn't about to just blindly send NS a check, cause I know while they'd appreciate receiving money, they weren't going to actually do any legwork to figure out to whom they should credit the payment.) Every morning I hovered over the extended WHOIS information and when the blessed day arrived when WHOIS returned with no info, I hopped over to joker.com and re-registered the domain cheaply and easily.
I would have been more than happy to have actually paid NSI for the domain renewal and gotten it over with. In fact, I'd have loved to have been able to change my contact info both for billing and technical issues, as the domain needed updated DNS server information as well. Stuck with an up-for-renewal domain that was, due to this informational snafu, essentially useless. Masochism runs deep in some parts, I guess.
But what if the story took place this year? What if I found I couldn't contact NSI at all yet desperately wished to renew the domain? It'd be taken from me and put up for auction? One cannot help but feel a Kafka twinge of helplessness when imagining such a scenario. And I'm worried that folks who find themselves in a similar bind will suddenly lose control of their domain, and they'll lose control of it because of NS' piss-poor "customer service" track record.
I liked the way the story moved, it wasn't anything revolutionary or earth shattering, but it was fun.
Hittin' the nail on the head right there -- the movie was fun. I have quibbles with some of the problems with the plot, and sure, there wasn't too much deep characterization going on, but damned if the movie wasn't just a lot of fun.
And compared to the pure and utter dreck we've been forced to endure in the name of "science fiction" in the past nine months or so (Supernova, Battlefield Earth, Mission To Mars...) this was a dandy welcome change of pace. For once I didn't feel as if the film was insulting the audience's intelligence.
The Interactive Fiction archive at ftp.gmd.de/if-archive has a wide variety of interpreters for the Infocom z-machine standard, including some for the Palm already. You can play any Infocom story files you have around, or grab some new games from the IF Archive's extensive library. Most every game released by the IF community ends up here eventually. There's also a yearly Interactive Fiction competition open to all; it's a good way to get to know the new luminaries of the genre.
But lately, I've been cultivating a theory: that JonKatz is not actually a human being, but in fact software that takes some random topic and turns it into a long, redundant, rambling essay on the dangers of globalization, media, capitalism, corporatism, ageism, intellectualism, polymorphism, foodism and the Geo Prizm.
Looks like someone beat you to it -- there's a "Virtual JonKatz" posting on this topic already. I think he's beginning to make more sense than Mr. Katz, and that's scaring me.
Check out today's UF about the Metallica/Napster fiasco for a stupendous example of what is wrong with User Friendly. Illiad has absolutely no idea what comedy is about.
"Oh look, the guy smashed the computer and he works for Metallica's PR dept. um, ha?"
Hell, if you replace "Metallica" with "Microsoft" you'll get practically the same joke Illiad's been making every now and then -- thugs from the Big Bad People coming in to smash up computers. I swear if this was a printed strip, you could see the white-out marks where he replaced the text. At best this could be a running joke, but at worst it's just a sad indicator that the strip isn't fresh anymore. Then again, there's only so many ways you can say "Bill Gates is a meglomaniacal weenie!" day in and day out and hope to make it funny.
It's sad that a strip with such little comedic value is seen as representative of the Linux/geek community's humor.
It's even sadder that the UFies believe worship of this strip is a prerequisite for membership in the Linux/geek community. I've literally had people say "You DON'T LIKE User Friendly?! What kind of a geek ARE you?" because, as we all know, being in a non-conformist group (who until recently were considered 'outcasts') means you must glom on to the same trends and preferences as everybody else. Quite a few of the comments here already also expressed this sentiment quite nicely, and I thank those responsible for truly helping to justifying this point.
Illiad, I'm glad your hard work is paying off and you're getting exposure; I just don't like your strip. I think that's the best any dissenter can say, really.
Sure, 1.4 million copyright infringements in 48 hours is different than one fellow trading tapes with his school chums.
But surely Lars isn't trying to say that one person's MP3 of "Enter Sandman" on Napster equals 1.4 million 'copyright infringements'. And surely Lars isn't insinuating that only one person in 48 hours has home-taped a song for their buddies.
I respect Lars for being able to openly and honestly speak his mind about the events with Napster without using a PR shill or, worse yet, a lawyer, for his voice. However, this whole thing now smacks to me about as hypocritical as Rosie O'Donnell's being at the moment -- the tireless anti-gun crusader's son's bodyguard is applying for a concealed weapons permit. It's bad for other people, but not bad given personal circumstances. I guess I was most shocked to see Lars still exhorting bootlegging, really.
Once in a while, you'll see a disc of these old games for sale from a legitimate source.
These collections are usually hampered by the desire of the publishing company (usually not even the original company that released the games initially, due to buyouts 'n mergers 'n rights-transfers 'n stuff) to put bloated frontends on the emulators and the like -- who can forget Activision's first Atari 2600 "Classics" pack, which required Windows 95 (and chafed my po' Windoze 3.1 britches back in 1995) and featured a nagging parental voice every now and then telling you to turn off the game and do your homework?
The collections are further ruined by idiot game reviewers who obligingly review them in between gaming sessions of Diablo 3 Arena Tournament EverCraft Online and trot out the same rehashed "the grafx sux d00d n its not in 3D" arguments -- remember, these are the people who complained that the Lost Treasures Of Infocom collections were boring cause they were made up of only words and no pictures. Each review is also not complete without an original, witty reminder to "stop living in the past." These insightful reflections provide more than enough inspiration to run right out and completely trick out your computer so you can play the latest FPS for a few months until another one comes out which renders your entire system obsolete.
The game companies therefore believe these collections have no real sale value and in an industry where you're expecting (and obliged, almost) to create the Next Big Game Franchise with every release, such collections are deemed a waste of production money. Meanwhile, nobody can understand why Daikatana has seemingly alienated a key portion of its intended audience already -- those who wish for a fun, playable game over the glitz and technical 3D card wizardry and oodles of Deathmatch weapon options.
I heartily applaud those who live in the past. Historical context is never a bad thing -- and yes, the games did have better play value, goddammit. I can still get hours of enjoyment out of MULE, and its theme music can still give me chills.
I downloaded RealPlayer 7 today. It is annoying indeed, because I also got (unwanted) Real Jukebox and Download Daemon, and (almost unwanted) Net2Phone. The bad part is that the installer doesn't ask whether I wish to install those, nor it asks the installation paths and other stuff.
I remember being able to specify all I wanted was the RealPlayer 7 for Windows and none of the other extraenous features, but ISTR this step happening during the persual of Real's web pages and if I'd blinked, I'd have missed the step that allowed me to choose. Then again, when the link to the FREE DOWNLOAD of RealPlayer from Real's main page takes you to an ad for the $29.95 version first -- and oh maybe there'll be a link to the 'basic player' -- so I'm fully convinced Real does not want to cater to those lusers who may, horror of horrors, prefer to actively have a say in a product download process.
Even the stripped-down FREE DOWNLOAD RealPlayer7 gave me problems. The installation added bookmarks to my collection (I thought bookmarks were URLs I personally wanted to keep handy for future reference, not some idiot program installer) and attempted to change my browser's start page, too -- just like ICQ did, all without asking if I wouldn't really rather want some crappy corporate portal as my start page.
And then there's the "StartCenter". Or SmartCenter. Or whatever the hell it is. Not content with having an icon smashed in your Start Menu and one in the QuickStart row for Win98, RealPlayer7 also wants to shove one up yer system tray as well. I have found no useful function of this S[t|m]artCenter other than the fact that it sits silent and ominous, taking up screenspace and a bit of memory, as I do other Windowsly things. And removing it seems to be more of a difficult task than it should be -- and, again, I don't remember agreeing to have it start up every reboot. Sure, you can kill it once it's started, but that's a needless step.
And what does it do?! I have found absolutely nobody who's able to tell me exactly why my life is enriched by having this sit, resident-like, in my system tray. If I want to start a saved RealAudio or RealVideo clip, I open it as I would any other file. If I choose a URL containing streaming Real content, the browser opens the app for me. There is almost never a time where I consciously head over to the system tray to actively start an application, volume control panels and the like notwithstanding.
The paranoid in me sez S[m|t]artCenter is providing information of some sort to RealNetworks. It would not surprise me in the least if that's what this little thing is doing. RealNetworks has clearly displayed no real respect for its users or their privacy or even their own wishes on how their own computer should be set up as far as personal preferences like bookmarks and browser start pages go. What's one more infraction among friends?
Slashdot Mirror
You conveniently have not read the other posts of mine in this thread, where I mention I was in the process of figuring out where the navigational problem was, be it on the MBTA's end or mine (and if it was on my end, figuring out how to fix it) before they yanked the new site away and put the old site back up. I discovered Mac Daniel's comment as this was all going down, and I jumped all over it out of frustration and annoyance.
But hey, thanks for playing.
and your "admin" (which happens to be a HUGE major blog hosting site)
The administrator of the server that hosts my site and the pictures I display off it, including the dozen full-size screenshots of the website as I found it, would probably not classify her host as a huge major blog hosting site. And she would certainly not appreciate any bandwidth overage bills.
Actually, the post linked here on Slashdot was the second post in this ongoing drama. The first post was an annoyed look at how the new website was rendered on my home XP box running Opera. It featured links to about 10 or 12 full-size screenshots of the drop-down menus all staying open and preventing me from accessing other parts of the UI. I wasn't actually ranting with a full head of steam at that point; I was just cranky at the T. I've seen the MBTA's quality steadily decline in the past 10 years, devolving into a transit system plagued with cost overruns, maintenance issues, horrible customer service and an amazingly botched roll-out of a brand new smart-card fare system. For example, on its first day of official use, the networked vending machines refused "CharlieCards" to those paying with credit or debit cards -- but charged them anyway. There were reports of folks trying three or four times to purchase a CharlieCard, and getting charged three or four times in quick succession. It's a minor inconvenience if you're trying to purchase one or two rides, but some of these people were buying monthly passes at around $40 a pop or higher, and a few days before the first of the month when rent's due.
Boston deserves better, especially since we're due for a fare increase at the end of the month. Given this stellar track record, finding that the T's brand-new website that refused to play well with my browser (or is it the other way around?) wasn't much of a surprise, but a real annoyance. I was worried that if the site wasn't working correctly on my browser, how many other people were having troubles and had any disabled users encountered accessibility problems with the UI too?
I got responses from Opera users on other platforms who said they weren't having problems, and I did get one response from a blind person using a screen reader who said sie could use the site actually better than expected, but a text-only or lite version would have been a better alternative.
Mac Daniel of the Boston Globe picked up on the post after it was featured on Universal Hub, and posted a quick one-liner in his "Starts & Stops" MBTA/Boston travel blog. He's not a T employee, he's not a representative of the MBTA, he's a contributing writer for the newspaper and I've been reading his stuff for quite some time now. The post quoted at the top of the comments was a knee-jerk, heated reaction to his knee-jerk, one-shot reaction, written without counting to ten. I'd been trying that day to figure out the problem between my browser and the new website, because I really wanted to get the site to render properly (and if it was a problem on my end, fix it up right.)
Once the T site reverted to its previous version I couldn't continue to play around with it, which was frustrating, and Mac's comment unfortunately just pushed the right buttons at the wrong time. I flew off the handle and I freely admit that. Who hasn't done similar in times of annoyance? I hadn't wanted to start a browser war when I was pointing out the problems I was having with the T site, but the curt "Don't use Opera" dismissal stuck in my craw and we all know how much fun it is when your craw has something stuck in it.
Suffice to say, however, the subsequent snowball effect has been a major ego check right into the boards, and yesterday morning I had a heapin' helping of a Morning After Remorse along with my breakfast. So it goes. You shoots your mouth off, you deal with the cleanup. So I'm cleaning up, making my peace, etc.
I didn't think the giant cartoon fight cloud would've reached Slashdot, but some of the points being raised right now in the midst of the typical digressions, AC shenanigans and car metaphors are pretty valid. How far should a web developer go in the name of compatibility? What standards should web design be held to? What constitutes a compliant web browser if W3C and MSIE's design standards don't get along? Is the MBTA, as a government agency, beholden t
Dude, those are some completely and utterly baseless comments you're throwing my way.
I saved up my paper route money to earn that Harry Potter broom and I'm damn proud of it.
The thing is, I hadn't made any major script-breaking adjustments to the browser's configuration. No custom Javascript files or style sheets, no widgets, none of that. And when I fully uninstalled and did a clean, fresh install, with defaults in place, I still saw the same problem.
Maybe it's aliens. You think?
BTW Having not seen the web site with Opera, what was not working?
The top menu nav bars all stayed dropped down on every page, obscuring other parts of the UI (bus schedule menu toggles, that kind of thing.) Couldn't click on any of the menu options, it'd just make the drop-down menu in question turn white. Looked like some crazy Javascript error. That's all.
I'm derspatchel. I took the entries and the pictures out of circulation. I don't need the comments and my admin doesn't need the bandwidth overages. I kept saying the last thing I wanted to do was start a goddamn browser war, but it looks as if I didn't really have any choice in that matter. I kicked a rock and it rolled downhill from there.
My original complaint was written as I was viewing the revamped website, and just couldn't believe the nav problem I had seen. Nearly half a million dollars went into the redesign and it seemed like they'd really goofed. The second complaint was written when Mac Daniel threw a little jab in his writeup on the debacle, while I was sussing out the nav problem with Ron Newman. Is it a coding thing? Is it an OS thing? Is it a configuration thing? Is it an enduser thing? I dunno. Then the MBTA reverted to the previous version so I couldn't play around with it any further. And then my knee-jerk reaction to Mac's knee-jerk reaction just led to more knee-jerk reactions. Okay, I gotta stop typing 'knee-jerk' because it's beginning to look weird.
I stand by my opinion that if a browser is in current development and it's W3C compliant, then it should by all rights be considered a supportable browser and a browser to be supported. That's all. If I had been crying that the MBTA site wasn't viewable on Netscape Navigator 4.0, say, then I could see why there'd be a problem and why the advice to change browsers would come pouring in.
All I wanted was to be able to use the website with a current, up-to-date, standards-compliant web browser. I also said I'd be happy to use another supported browser to view it, but it would be nice if I didn't have to, and it'd be much nicer if I weren't told to.
Today our player professions by percent of masters is significantly skewed to the core combat professions as a very small proportion of our player (less than 1% of players) choose to master the professions of Bio Engineer or Creature Handler. For this reason, we are putting the focus where the majority of our players are putting their game-play investment -- on the core profession paths.
Of course nobody's playing Creature Handlers, because they've been broken beyond usefulness. And for SOE to promise new tamable creatures in the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion, a much-needed shot in the arm as far as creature handler content goes, and sell this expansion to creature handlers on those merits... well, this revamp has been announced at precisely the worst time possible for the 18 people left playing CH.
Sad, really, cause my fondest memories of the game involve running around with baby rancors and stuff.
You may thing this is true, but my experience would be different. They recently added voice into EQ: things that other players can trigger like "Follow me" and "Run."
My wife was playing with that particular "feature" and after about 5 seconds, I told her that if she didn't turn that off, I would. It was the most annoying thing.
Woe be unto those in a Diablo2 game when several players discover the number pad quotes for the first time...
Time to die!
Time... to... die!
These are for you.
For you.
A gift for you.
Oops.
Thank you!
Thanks.
Thank you!
Thanks.
Thank you!
Thanks.
I prefer to play MMORPGs silently these days, anyway. Nobody's done anything useful with audio cues recently so it doesn't matter.
Might be worth a look-into -- the bash version claims to be "ca 1984".
Several companies have already done this. After a particularly nasty episode with non-functioning ATMs, branches that closed way too early, and a paycheck what Needed Depositing, I found out that citizensbanksucks.com had already been taken by, you guessed it, Citizens Bank. Guess they feel that acquiring the name instead of playing Rock'em Sock'em Lawyers makes them look better or something.
Funny, though -- in their haste to get that .com registered, they missed .net and .org... (have at 'em!)
Personally, I think that the trend will move towards "-blows" as the Suffix of Choice for naysayers. If we can change trendy prefixes at the drop of a hat (i-, e-, x- ...) why not angry suffixes? -blows, -bites, -chews... and all with the same great oral fixation we've come to know and love from -sucks. Grab those domains now, kids!
However, in terms of total addictiveness and true timewasting, Civilization wins, hands-down. I could get stuck for hours with that game. There was a time during the summer of 1994 when there was always (and I stress always, it was indeed 24/7) somebody in the house I hung out at playing Civilization or DOOM, but Civ was just a bit more interesting for other people to sit around and watch, too. Someone learned the buy-as-building-switch-to-military-unit trick, we all learned the trick. Someone decided it'd be cool to use the Great Wall (and later the UN) to mercilessly spank the computer and still make peace every other turn, we all tried it. It was pretty interesting, to say the least. Civ 2 had the same tenacious addictiveness, but somehow it just didn't feel the same as the VGA graphics of Civ 1. Even just building your castle was more fun than watching your 'throne room' go up.
I wonder why Katz is requesting "such archives be created" when there are probably quite a bit of web sites and Usenet groups and BBSes with at least one portion of their gaming content devoted to older games or, at the very least, sporadic nostalgia threads. Shrug. At least it gives Slashdot something fun to read this morning.
Bah. Whatever. This is a stupid restriction and all involved know it. How could they possibly hope to enforce it? Voice-activated microphones in an e-book unit? Please.
I suggest getting a group of 20 or so together with Glassbook, go up in front of Adobe's corporate HQ, and just have a nice, happy reading of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Bring some cocoa or tea, maybe a few folding chairs, make a nice event out of it. What could they possibly do to you in those circumstances? Yell at you to just shut up?! "Freedom of speech!" "Not with our material!" "We memorized it! So there!"
The insanity goes on and on...
The fact they swiped the text from Project Gutenberg is just ironically nasty. May it end up being self-defeating. I personally think e-books in their current evolutionary "one person, one book, don't lend it, don't share it" path are abominable and, hopefully, a terrible financial casualty for those involved.
Too true. In fact, I've tried suggesting a new motto to Napster: "That's Not Phish" Sadly, they've yet to come to their senses and adopt it.
Anyway, after several minutes of perusing the one entire aisle they had set up for VHS tapes, I made the mistake of asking a Helpful Salesdroid if they had any special section for letterboxed releases on VHS (yes, a futile question, but I really just wanted to know if they sold any letterboxed films on VHS.) The Salesdroid blinked and replied, "But that's what DVD is for."
Gee, thanks, but no thanks. What really irked me was that it seemed as if the Salesdroid was trying to get me to upgrade my purchase of one or two videotapes into a full-blown DVD player and some DVD releases as well. It's like going to the store to buy some chewing gum and having the salesdroid say "Why would you want chewing gum when you could have a full homecooked meal on this new Amana range?" I mean, really.
No sir, I don't like it.
Actually, the Game Genie was a third-party peripheral and when it was first introduced, Nintendo fought real hard to keep it from being sold. Usual company line about the missing "Seal of Approval", violating the integrity of the games, yadda yadda yadda.
I'm not sure on this, but I bet Nintendo had their own Game Genie-like product in the pipeline, and it irked them to see a third-party developer do something with it first. Shrug. Don't know why they calmed down, though.
I did a Slackware floppy install using nothing but AOL trial disks! This was, of course, back in the day before they started sending out CDs (and now in wasteful DVD-like packaging, too) and I was more than thrilled to actually find a use for all them lil' floppies.
Gone are those days, gone gone gone...
Well, Linux isn't 'officially' supported in the Alpha GS series. That this guy was able to get it working and on 31 of the 32 processors is pretty interesting and shows folks it can be done.
Or would you be satisfied with more Jon Katz ramblings? Yammering on about "Shadowrunner" hardly strikes me as "newsworthy", but YMMV...
Back in 1997 I registered a domain for myself using what was then the only game in town. As the 2-year renewal date approached in 1999, I had switched ISPs and addresses, both email and physical, several times. Every attempt I made to contact Network Solutions regarding the change in Billing Contact information failed. Sending email from another address would only return me an autoreply chiding me for using the wrong email. I exhausted my patience waiting on the phone for an actual human to talk to, and even the Send-Them-A-Letter-On-Company-Letterhead trick (what company letterhead? It was a personal domain for personal use, fercryingoutloud) didn't work. So I merely decided to wait it out.
The domain got put on hold for non-payment (I wasn't about to just blindly send NS a check, cause I know while they'd appreciate receiving money, they weren't going to actually do any legwork to figure out to whom they should credit the payment.) Every morning I hovered over the extended WHOIS information and when the blessed day arrived when WHOIS returned with no info, I hopped over to joker.com and re-registered the domain cheaply and easily.
I would have been more than happy to have actually paid NSI for the domain renewal and gotten it over with. In fact, I'd have loved to have been able to change my contact info both for billing and technical issues, as the domain needed updated DNS server information as well. Stuck with an up-for-renewal domain that was, due to this informational snafu, essentially useless. Masochism runs deep in some parts, I guess.
But what if the story took place this year? What if I found I couldn't contact NSI at all yet desperately wished to renew the domain? It'd be taken from me and put up for auction? One cannot help but feel a Kafka twinge of helplessness when imagining such a scenario. And I'm worried that folks who find themselves in a similar bind will suddenly lose control of their domain, and they'll lose control of it because of NS' piss-poor "customer service" track record.
And that's really the worst part of it all.
Thanks, guys.
Hittin' the nail on the head right there -- the movie was fun. I have quibbles with some of the problems with the plot, and sure, there wasn't too much deep characterization going on, but damned if the movie wasn't just a lot of fun.
And compared to the pure and utter dreck we've been forced to endure in the name of "science fiction" in the past nine months or so (Supernova, Battlefield Earth, Mission To Mars...) this was a dandy welcome change of pace. For once I didn't feel as if the film was insulting the audience's intelligence.
It's no Iron Giant, but I liked it just the same.
Looks like someone beat you to it -- there's a "Virtual JonKatz" posting on this topic already. I think he's beginning to make more sense than Mr. Katz, and that's scaring me.
"Oh look, the guy smashed the computer and he works for Metallica's PR dept. um, ha?"
Hell, if you replace "Metallica" with "Microsoft" you'll get practically the same joke Illiad's been making every now and then -- thugs from the Big Bad People coming in to smash up computers. I swear if this was a printed strip, you could see the white-out marks where he replaced the text. At best this could be a running joke, but at worst it's just a sad indicator that the strip isn't fresh anymore. Then again, there's only so many ways you can say "Bill Gates is a meglomaniacal weenie!" day in and day out and hope to make it funny.
It's sad that a strip with such little comedic value is seen as representative of the Linux/geek community's humor.
It's even sadder that the UFies believe worship of this strip is a prerequisite for membership in the Linux/geek community. I've literally had people say "You DON'T LIKE User Friendly?! What kind of a geek ARE you?" because, as we all know, being in a non-conformist group (who until recently were considered 'outcasts') means you must glom on to the same trends and preferences as everybody else. Quite a few of the comments here already also expressed this sentiment quite nicely, and I thank those responsible for truly helping to justifying this point.
Illiad, I'm glad your hard work is paying off and you're getting exposure; I just don't like your strip. I think that's the best any dissenter can say, really.
But surely Lars isn't trying to say that one person's MP3 of "Enter Sandman" on Napster equals 1.4 million 'copyright infringements'. And surely Lars isn't insinuating that only one person in 48 hours has home-taped a song for their buddies.
I respect Lars for being able to openly and honestly speak his mind about the events with Napster without using a PR shill or, worse yet, a lawyer, for his voice. However, this whole thing now smacks to me about as hypocritical as Rosie O'Donnell's being at the moment -- the tireless anti-gun crusader's son's bodyguard is applying for a concealed weapons permit. It's bad for other people, but not bad given personal circumstances. I guess I was most shocked to see Lars still exhorting bootlegging, really.
These collections are usually hampered by the desire of the publishing company (usually not even the original company that released the games initially, due to buyouts 'n mergers 'n rights-transfers 'n stuff) to put bloated frontends on the emulators and the like -- who can forget Activision's first Atari 2600 "Classics" pack, which required Windows 95 (and chafed my po' Windoze 3.1 britches back in 1995) and featured a nagging parental voice every now and then telling you to turn off the game and do your homework?
The collections are further ruined by idiot game reviewers who obligingly review them in between gaming sessions of Diablo 3 Arena Tournament EverCraft Online and trot out the same rehashed "the grafx sux d00d n its not in 3D" arguments -- remember, these are the people who complained that the Lost Treasures Of Infocom collections were boring cause they were made up of only words and no pictures. Each review is also not complete without an original, witty reminder to "stop living in the past." These insightful reflections provide more than enough inspiration to run right out and completely trick out your computer so you can play the latest FPS for a few months until another one comes out which renders your entire system obsolete.
The game companies therefore believe these collections have no real sale value and in an industry where you're expecting (and obliged, almost) to create the Next Big Game Franchise with every release, such collections are deemed a waste of production money. Meanwhile, nobody can understand why Daikatana has seemingly alienated a key portion of its intended audience already -- those who wish for a fun, playable game over the glitz and technical 3D card wizardry and oodles of Deathmatch weapon options.
I heartily applaud those who live in the past. Historical context is never a bad thing -- and yes, the games did have better play value, goddammit. I can still get hours of enjoyment out of MULE, and its theme music can still give me chills.
I remember being able to specify all I wanted was the RealPlayer 7 for Windows and none of the other extraenous features, but ISTR this step happening during the persual of Real's web pages and if I'd blinked, I'd have missed the step that allowed me to choose. Then again, when the link to the FREE DOWNLOAD of RealPlayer from Real's main page takes you to an ad for the $29.95 version first -- and oh maybe there'll be a link to the 'basic player' -- so I'm fully convinced Real does not want to cater to those lusers who may, horror of horrors, prefer to actively have a say in a product download process.
Even the stripped-down FREE DOWNLOAD RealPlayer7 gave me problems. The installation added bookmarks to my collection (I thought bookmarks were URLs I personally wanted to keep handy for future reference, not some idiot program installer) and attempted to change my browser's start page, too -- just like ICQ did, all without asking if I wouldn't really rather want some crappy corporate portal as my start page.
And then there's the "StartCenter". Or SmartCenter. Or whatever the hell it is. Not content with having an icon smashed in your Start Menu and one in the QuickStart row for Win98, RealPlayer7 also wants to shove one up yer system tray as well. I have found no useful function of this S[t|m]artCenter other than the fact that it sits silent and ominous, taking up screenspace and a bit of memory, as I do other Windowsly things. And removing it seems to be more of a difficult task than it should be -- and, again, I don't remember agreeing to have it start up every reboot. Sure, you can kill it once it's started, but that's a needless step.
And what does it do?! I have found absolutely nobody who's able to tell me exactly why my life is enriched by having this sit, resident-like, in my system tray. If I want to start a saved RealAudio or RealVideo clip, I open it as I would any other file. If I choose a URL containing streaming Real content, the browser opens the app for me. There is almost never a time where I consciously head over to the system tray to actively start an application, volume control panels and the like notwithstanding.
The paranoid in me sez S[m|t]artCenter is providing information of some sort to RealNetworks. It would not surprise me in the least if that's what this little thing is doing. RealNetworks has clearly displayed no real respect for its users or their privacy or even their own wishes on how their own computer should be set up as far as personal preferences like bookmarks and browser start pages go. What's one more infraction among friends?