A standard is something you have to live with for a long time. You want it to be as good as humanly possible.
Can you think of any widely successful standard that met this level of excellence? I'm not sure I can.
Consider the spam problems SMTP makes inevitable. Consider the basic clumsiness of FTP. Consider the apalling top-surface scratch-vulnerability of audio CDs. Consider the atrocious, seldom-used, half-baked "in-player pan-and-scan conversion" of DVD-Video, or the anamorphic scheme that throws large amounts of picture resolution away when watching a widescreen movie on a standard 4:3 TV. Or the downright bizarre telecine encoding and de-encoding necessary to watch film-based DVDs on a progressive-scan TV. Consider the silmultaneously Draconian and doomed-to-fail DRM efforts on next-gen formats.
The drafters of the standards for these successful systems and formats were willing to sacrifice a measure of absolute engineering perfection in favor of expedient social/political acceptance. Because like it or not, politics matter. Getting consensus from large groups of people is both crucial and difficult. But in the digital era more than ever, the clumsy, quick-and-dirty engineering that makes consensus more likely can be worked around, smoothed over, or otherwise patched up later.
gimp vs. photoshop? i'd say gimp wins hands down. that silly MDI (or is it SDI) is a bit klunky in gimp, but functionality, it seems level with photoshop.
The GIMP is extremely impressive for FOSS. I've been trying to use the GIMP for my all my photographic needs lately.
But without adjustment layers, I think GIMP poses absolutely no threat to Photoshop on the pro level, no matter what else the GIMP does or how much Photoshop costs.
Even with adjustment layers, it would be a tough fight for the GIMP anyway. Photoshop is a bargain by the (admittedly insane) standards of photo gear, it's got real tech support, it's frequently updated to work well with the latest digital cameras, it's got extensive color-management and calibration features, there are a million books and tutorials about it, there are tons of third-party plugins, it's extensively optimized and blazing fast, etc. It's state-of-the-art and the industry standard.
The GIMP is updated slowly, sluggish in operation (sometimes excruciatingly so), extremely quirky in UI and support, and frankly feature-poor by comparison. It's way more than the casual snapshooter (like me) needs, but I can see that it's not even close to competing with Photoshop.
...some guides from Microsoft suggest that you disable the firewall if the server has a high number of users.
Goodness, that's most unfortunate. I'm not a Windows configuration expert or a security expert, but that sounds like bad advice to me.
But then someone took their infected notebook with them to work and infected their network. The notebook were found and the antivirus was up to date but it could not detect the worm.
That's where I suspect a software firewall - running on the laptop - could have helped. It could have prevented the spread of the worm to other computers, at least.
Doesn't help if, like zotob.G, the critter is called "WinDrg32", or like Mytob "LSASS", or even "iexplore.exe" or "explorer.exe".
I don't know about other packet-filtering software firewalls, but Sygate's does a CRC check on the process's EXE before granting it access. A process has to have (at least) the right EXE path, name, and CRC to get to the network. In this way, Sygate detects patches and updates, and should detect rootkit patches and EXE infections too.
It's true that naming a worm process "explorer.exe" or something would increase the worm's chances of obtaining a human's permission to get through a firewall, but it wouldn't be automatic or invisible.
I think it's wise to firewall any computer connected to the internet. Even a simple NAT box or basic software packet-filtering stops most worming attacks like this cold, and require minimal effort. Why wouldn't you want that kind of protection, on any OS?
You cannot block port 445 (which zotob uses) since that is what is used in part for file and print sharing.
Decent software packet-filter type firewalls (I like the freebie version of Sygate Personal Firewall myself) block absolutely all traffic (inbound and outbound), but make it simple for the user to set up specific exceptions on a process (not port) basis. So it's possible to grant network permission to Windows components, while denying access to other processes.
In the case of something like ZOTOB, this means that even if a firewalled machine became infected (because vulnerable Windows components had been granted network permissions), the worm wouldn't be able to spread from that firewalled machine. The software firewall would show a popup window saying something like "ZOTOB.EXE is attempting to access the network. Allow it?" Even a minimally-clued user could take the opportunity to Google "ZOTOB.EXE" and decide to click "No!" Even a non-clued user could at least tell IT about it. This would help prevent the spread of the worm and alert the user that he's got a virus, far more immediately than conventional virus scanners can.
MDK2 did this, around 1998 or so. It seemed to have an impact on level design, though - the loading always happened in the middle of a longish winding tunnel, from which the player could not see either the area he was leaving or the new area he was approaching.
That was clever, but obviously it's got implications. It's necessary (through plot contriavance, level design contriavance, or otherwise) to ensure that the player couldn't outrun the loading, for example. In an FPS type game, that could put a sort of speed limit on the player, which could cramp the style of the level developers or mod developers. You can see why that sort of thing might be a deal-breaker for something like HL2.
I actually removed Flash from my work PC completely. And it turns out I don't miss it a bit. No more slow-loading, annoying animated ads. No more too-fancy mystery-meat website navigation. No more Homestarrunner or Flash games while I'm supposed to be working, either.
...since I'm using Mozilla Suite and Firefox exclusively, I can fully understand anyone who abandons it - stability has been awful for me in the last half year or so...
Hmm. I've had the opposite experience. I've been using Mozilla since v1.2 or thereabouts, on both Win2K and XP, and it very rarely crashes - perhaps once a month. Less often than IE did when I was using IE. When it does crash, it's almost always related to a media plugin like WMP losing its mind. I haven't noticed the rendering problems you mention, either.
Not that I disbelieve you. I'm just pointing out that one person's experience may not correlate well with the average experience.
Your thermostat? Does it possibly allow temperature changes by time...
Nope. It doesn't do anything like that. There are just some extra segments on the LCD, so someone figured, "Hey, throw a clock on there!"
The microwave oven? I'm fairly certain that your microwave oven allows you to set a start time; this would require a clock.
I'm not so sure it can. It's certainly true that it's not at all obvious how to do such a thing, from looking at the front panel. I've never wanted to do a thing like that anyway - microwaves are all about immediacy, after all.
Cell phone? Probably to let you see what rate period you're in...
It would be way more useful to just show the current rate, rather than expecting me to memorize the rate schedule.
Kitchen timer? Does your kitchen timer have the ability to act as an alarm clock?
Probably. I've never used it that way. I already have an alarm clock and a watch with an alarm.
A lot of what we do in our lives is time based, and in order for devices to automate those actions, they have to have clocks.
Sure, but these devices are often hard-to-set, hard-to-read, or both. That is to say, they're lousy clocks. They can't really replace purpose-made clocks, so I'll have to have some of those, too. They don't make my life any easier - I can't get away with glancing at the microwave to find out the time, for example, because I can't trust it to have the correct time. They actually make my life very slightly harder, because I have more clocks to maintain.
There are an awful lot of gadgets - like my digital thermostat, my microwave oven, my electronic kitchen timer, my cable box, or my cell phone - which incorporate clocks to no obvious purpose.
These clocks become one more thing to futz with when DST comes or goes, when the power fails, or when batteries die. When I want to know what time it is, I generally look at my watch, partly because I can't trust all the myriad clock-gadgets to have the right time all the time.
I'd really dig it if gadget-designers stopped throwing a poorly-designed, hard-to-set digital clock into everything they made. Some gadgets (like a camera or a PDA) have a legit purpose for including a clock, but usually it's just a bullet point for the box.
I predict a big rise in popularity of those Internet Time programs, and would not be surprised if Microsoft threw something like that into Vista.
Actually, Windows XP has internet time-synch built in already. Right-click the system-tray clock, pick "Adjust Date/Time," then check out the "Internet Time" tab.
Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000 also include internet time-synch services, but require some poking around with the service manager and maybe even the command line to turn them on. They can be tricky to get working properly with a strict packet-filtering type software firewall, though, since Windows runs about 20 zillion processes under the name "services.exe," which you definitely don't want to give blanket firewall permissions to.
MS supports their hardware too. They support their keyboards, mice, network adapters, and other hardware that they actually sell.
Do they, though?
I recently discovered that the US$100 Microsoft game controller I bought no more than a couple of years ago is now officially no-longer-supported by Microsoft. The latest versions of the (very necessary) Windows drivers for this device are not even available on-line; if my driver CD gets scratched or lost, I'm SOL.
Does that count as "support," really? MS in this case only supported the hardware for the length of its sales lifetime, not the length of its useful lifetime. This was the first piece of MS hardware I ever bought, and it's looking like it will be the last, too.
But you seem to forget how quickly and earnestly MS mobilized after realizing what the game was about... [MS IE] really did set the stage for the internet.
If anyone set the stage for the success of the WWW, it would be services like Compuserve and the old Freenet BBSes that connected users to communities. Hypertext services like Gopher were already popular and useful there; the WWW was a natural heir to such systems, and it was glitzy and graphical, easy to navigate, and even pretty easy to write for. It was very obvious that it would be big. The WWW was going places, and that's the only reason MS was interested.
As long as you send the proper doctype header, modern IE browsers (5.5 and up) will use the standards based box model and most pages that use common features will render fairly consistently under it and Gecko.
This is simply contrary to my (admittedly limited) HTML/CSS experience. Even latest-patched IE 6 was goofing up the box model on my (validated!) XHTML pages - pages that rendered consistently in Gecko, Opera, and Konqueror, but that did weird things in IE.
The W3C doesn't and shouldn't have a more privledged position in this debate -- they too make mistakes and terrible calls on technology.
I'd rather have standards dictated by flawed human beings trying their honest best than by a company which has demonstrated repeatedly that it is genuinely malicious.
But [if] a browser weren't included with windows would [the web] ever have hoped to explode as fast as it did?
Was exploding as fast as it did really a good thing? Can you think of one or two things (like web standards, e-mail protocols, or new web-related legislation) that we might have been able to do better with a little more consideration?
Progress is great, I'm not questioning that. But unbridled speed-at-all-costs progress is less clearly a good thing.
I don't see much signs of an editorial conspiracy, since a few of the reviews I've seen are definitely in the realm of "very angry constructive criticism".
Yeah, there are plenty of 1-star reviews on NewEgg.
Which confuses me a bit. I've submitted 5 or 6 reviews there, all of which were basically positive ("It works!") but some of which contained a few caveats or gotchas. I tried to inlucde the sort of end-user-experience details that I wish I had been able to get before buying - stuff like "Win2K drivers not so hot - good choice under XP though" or "May require more than just a screwdriver to install." I've seen other reviews there with the same sort of useful information in them.
But about half of my submissions were rejected, and some of the others were ruthlessly pared down, eliminating the caveats. Where do the other informative reviews come from, where do the angry 1-star reviews come from, if the editors are this zealous about removing any trace of negative feedback?
The NewEgg editors don't seem very consistent in what they allow and what they don't. Although praising NewEgg's prompt delivery seems to help a review pass muster.
...even firefox (latest release) doesn't correctly pass the acid2 test. By that definition, FF isn't completely standards compliant either.
No, but it's close - it's obvious the Gecko guys are actually trying. Whereas IE appears to be deliberately flouting the rules / standards / guidelines.
Just tired of seeing another unfair MS bash.
But you're not even claiming anything chia_monkey said is counter-factual - in what way was it "unfair?" Heck, in what way was it a "bash," as opposed to a somewhat cynical reading of an unpleasant reality?
MSIE... is partially reponsible for the huge popularity the internet enjoys today.
I seem to remember it differently. MSIE was hastily tossed together from purchased and recycled components only after it became very clear that Netscape was on to something really, really big. The Web would have happened with or without IE.
...it was fairly obvious that the alliance was modding River into some sort of super assassin/warrior chick. This being something so overdone that it's cliche.
Agree completely. I just watched this trailer with the SO, and I said something like "It's not enough that she's a Super-Genius with psychic powers? She has to know kung-fu too? Cripes, she's Superman! What does she even need the rest of the gang for?"
Suddenly it the movie starts to look like Fists Of Buffy In Spaaaaaace!
But that's what's selling at the box office today, I guess.
I was posting about Mozilla, not Firefox. By "(Firefox too?)" I meant that Firefox might work the same way, or it might not - I don't (didn't) know for sure. If you say it doesn't work that way, I believe you.
Since you were responding to a post about Mozilla, and since you didn't say specifically which browser you are using, I think a reader could be forgiven for thinking (as I did) that you were also talking about Mozilla, in which case the information you posted was not correct.
If MS was seriously trying to limit the appeal of the Web, why push RSS (a relatively new web-based app) into the mainstream by including it in IE?
No matter how good IE or the web gets, there will always be plenty of PC-based activities that are better as local apps than as web-based apps. And local apps means using an OS, and that means a sales opportunity for MS.
Rondeau's story says: The navigation system in IE 7 shows that the web browser's most groundbreaking user interface paradigm is maturing. The drop-downs for the back and forward buttons are now combined into a single dropdown that shows the user placement with regard to pages in the back and in front.
Mozilla (Firefox too?) has had this exact thing (it's under the "Go" menu in Mozilla) for at least a couple of years now.
Actual measurements of system power consumption, running a Pentium-M on a Pentium-IV mobo, have been done. That configuration consumes much less than a comparable Pentium IV system.
Not to say there isn't even more room for improvement. But I, for one, am impressed.
PC games have obnoxiously forced the players to watch a bunch of movies advertising the game publisher and developer for some time. (Yeah, most of the time you can Esc from the movie - buy why should I have to? I paid my money.) This year, Valve patched Half-Life 2 so that if the user removes or replaces the Valve logo/movie, Steam automatically re-downloads, installs, then plays a fresh copy.
And the idea of advertising in or with games is a lot older than that anyway. Does anyone remember the Othello-like "Cool Spot" 7up game from the early 90s? Or the Sega Genesis game that was basically a giant McDonald's ad? How about the bacteria-fighting toothpaste ad/game for the Atari 8-bit computers from 1982 or so? Not to mention the newer phenomenon of music promotion through video games.
What baffles me about this is why a game developer would be so willing to invite ad-removing hackery. I get the impression from the article that this sort of ad will mostly be used in MMO type games; don't those folks have enough trouble with hacking as it is?
Hey, I'm not trying to defend the ugly status quo, I'm just pointing out that there are reasons for the way things are.
I wish the OSS movement all the best, I really do. Use quite a bit of it myself. But face facts: in a world where a 3.5" floppy is still referred to as a "hard disk" by a large percentage of PC users, Linux is a long way from mainstream, regardless of your familiarity with it.
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A standard is something you have to live with for a long time. You want it to be as good as humanly possible.
Can you think of any widely successful standard that met this level of excellence? I'm not sure I can.
Consider the spam problems SMTP makes inevitable. Consider the basic clumsiness of FTP. Consider the apalling top-surface scratch-vulnerability of audio CDs. Consider the atrocious, seldom-used, half-baked "in-player pan-and-scan conversion" of DVD-Video, or the anamorphic scheme that throws large amounts of picture resolution away when watching a widescreen movie on a standard 4:3 TV. Or the downright bizarre telecine encoding and de-encoding necessary to watch film-based DVDs on a progressive-scan TV. Consider the silmultaneously Draconian and doomed-to-fail DRM efforts on next-gen formats.
The drafters of the standards for these successful systems and formats were willing to sacrifice a measure of absolute engineering perfection in favor of expedient social/political acceptance. Because like it or not, politics matter. Getting consensus from large groups of people is both crucial and difficult. But in the digital era more than ever, the clumsy, quick-and-dirty engineering that makes consensus more likely can be worked around, smoothed over, or otherwise patched up later.
gimp vs. photoshop? i'd say gimp wins hands down. that silly MDI (or is it SDI) is a bit klunky in gimp, but functionality, it seems level with photoshop.
The GIMP is extremely impressive for FOSS. I've been trying to use the GIMP for my all my photographic needs lately.
But without adjustment layers, I think GIMP poses absolutely no threat to Photoshop on the pro level, no matter what else the GIMP does or how much Photoshop costs.
Even with adjustment layers, it would be a tough fight for the GIMP anyway. Photoshop is a bargain by the (admittedly insane) standards of photo gear, it's got real tech support, it's frequently updated to work well with the latest digital cameras, it's got extensive color-management and calibration features, there are a million books and tutorials about it, there are tons of third-party plugins, it's extensively optimized and blazing fast, etc. It's state-of-the-art and the industry standard.
The GIMP is updated slowly, sluggish in operation (sometimes excruciatingly so), extremely quirky in UI and support, and frankly feature-poor by comparison. It's way more than the casual snapshooter (like me) needs, but I can see that it's not even close to competing with Photoshop.
Goodness, that's most unfortunate. I'm not a Windows configuration expert or a security expert, but that sounds like bad advice to me.
But then someone took their infected notebook with them to work and infected their network. The notebook were found and the antivirus was up to date but it could not detect the worm.
That's where I suspect a software firewall - running on the laptop - could have helped. It could have prevented the spread of the worm to other computers, at least.
I don't know about other packet-filtering software firewalls, but Sygate's does a CRC check on the process's EXE before granting it access. A process has to have (at least) the right EXE path, name, and CRC to get to the network. In this way, Sygate detects patches and updates, and should detect rootkit patches and EXE infections too.
It's true that naming a worm process "explorer.exe" or something would increase the worm's chances of obtaining a human's permission to get through a firewall, but it wouldn't be automatic or invisible.
I think it's wise to firewall any computer connected to the internet. Even a simple NAT box or basic software packet-filtering stops most worming attacks like this cold, and require minimal effort. Why wouldn't you want that kind of protection, on any OS?
You cannot block port 445 (which zotob uses) since that is what is used in part for file and print sharing.
Decent software packet-filter type firewalls (I like the freebie version of Sygate Personal Firewall myself) block absolutely all traffic (inbound and outbound), but make it simple for the user to set up specific exceptions on a process (not port) basis. So it's possible to grant network permission to Windows components, while denying access to other processes.
In the case of something like ZOTOB, this means that even if a firewalled machine became infected (because vulnerable Windows components had been granted network permissions), the worm wouldn't be able to spread from that firewalled machine. The software firewall would show a popup window saying something like "ZOTOB.EXE is attempting to access the network. Allow it?" Even a minimally-clued user could take the opportunity to Google "ZOTOB.EXE" and decide to click "No!" Even a non-clued user could at least tell IT about it. This would help prevent the spread of the worm and alert the user that he's got a virus, far more immediately than conventional virus scanners can.
MDK2 did this, around 1998 or so. It seemed to have an impact on level design, though - the loading always happened in the middle of a longish winding tunnel, from which the player could not see either the area he was leaving or the new area he was approaching.
That was clever, but obviously it's got implications. It's necessary (through plot contriavance, level design contriavance, or otherwise) to ensure that the player couldn't outrun the loading, for example. In an FPS type game, that could put a sort of speed limit on the player, which could cramp the style of the level developers or mod developers. You can see why that sort of thing might be a deal-breaker for something like HL2.
I actually removed Flash from my work PC completely. And it turns out I don't miss it a bit. No more slow-loading, annoying animated ads. No more too-fancy mystery-meat website navigation. No more Homestarrunner or Flash games while I'm supposed to be working, either.
...since I'm using Mozilla Suite and Firefox exclusively, I can fully understand anyone who abandons it - stability has been awful for me in the last half year or so...
Hmm. I've had the opposite experience. I've been using Mozilla since v1.2 or thereabouts, on both Win2K and XP, and it very rarely crashes - perhaps once a month. Less often than IE did when I was using IE. When it does crash, it's almost always related to a media plugin like WMP losing its mind. I haven't noticed the rendering problems you mention, either.
Not that I disbelieve you. I'm just pointing out that one person's experience may not correlate well with the average experience.
Your thermostat? Does it possibly allow temperature changes by time...
Nope. It doesn't do anything like that. There are just some extra segments on the LCD, so someone figured, "Hey, throw a clock on there!"
The microwave oven? I'm fairly certain that your microwave oven allows you to set a start time; this would require a clock.
I'm not so sure it can. It's certainly true that it's not at all obvious how to do such a thing, from looking at the front panel. I've never wanted to do a thing like that anyway - microwaves are all about immediacy, after all.
Cell phone? Probably to let you see what rate period you're in...
It would be way more useful to just show the current rate, rather than expecting me to memorize the rate schedule.
Kitchen timer? Does your kitchen timer have the ability to act as an alarm clock?
Probably. I've never used it that way. I already have an alarm clock and a watch with an alarm.
A lot of what we do in our lives is time based, and in order for devices to automate those actions, they have to have clocks.
Sure, but these devices are often hard-to-set, hard-to-read, or both. That is to say, they're lousy clocks. They can't really replace purpose-made clocks, so I'll have to have some of those, too. They don't make my life any easier - I can't get away with glancing at the microwave to find out the time, for example, because I can't trust it to have the correct time. They actually make my life very slightly harder, because I have more clocks to maintain.
There are an awful lot of gadgets - like my digital thermostat, my microwave oven, my electronic kitchen timer, my cable box, or my cell phone - which incorporate clocks to no obvious purpose.
These clocks become one more thing to futz with when DST comes or goes, when the power fails, or when batteries die. When I want to know what time it is, I generally look at my watch, partly because I can't trust all the myriad clock-gadgets to have the right time all the time.
I'd really dig it if gadget-designers stopped throwing a poorly-designed, hard-to-set digital clock into everything they made. Some gadgets (like a camera or a PDA) have a legit purpose for including a clock, but usually it's just a bullet point for the box.
I predict a big rise in popularity of those Internet Time programs, and would not be surprised if Microsoft threw something like that into Vista.
Actually, Windows XP has internet time-synch built in already. Right-click the system-tray clock, pick "Adjust Date/Time," then check out the "Internet Time" tab.
Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000 also include internet time-synch services, but require some poking around with the service manager and maybe even the command line to turn them on. They can be tricky to get working properly with a strict packet-filtering type software firewall, though, since Windows runs about 20 zillion processes under the name "services.exe," which you definitely don't want to give blanket firewall permissions to.
MS supports their hardware too. They support their keyboards, mice, network adapters, and other hardware that they actually sell.
Do they, though?
I recently discovered that the US$100 Microsoft game controller I bought no more than a couple of years ago is now officially no-longer-supported by Microsoft. The latest versions of the (very necessary) Windows drivers for this device are not even available on-line; if my driver CD gets scratched or lost, I'm SOL.
Does that count as "support," really? MS in this case only supported the hardware for the length of its sales lifetime, not the length of its useful lifetime. This was the first piece of MS hardware I ever bought, and it's looking like it will be the last, too.
But you seem to forget how quickly and earnestly MS mobilized after realizing what the game was about... [MS IE] really did set the stage for the internet.
If anyone set the stage for the success of the WWW, it would be services like Compuserve and the old Freenet BBSes that connected users to communities. Hypertext services like Gopher were already popular and useful there; the WWW was a natural heir to such systems, and it was glitzy and graphical, easy to navigate, and even pretty easy to write for. It was very obvious that it would be big. The WWW was going places, and that's the only reason MS was interested.
As long as you send the proper doctype header, modern IE browsers (5.5 and up) will use the standards based box model and most pages that use common features will render fairly consistently under it and Gecko.
This is simply contrary to my (admittedly limited) HTML/CSS experience. Even latest-patched IE 6 was goofing up the box model on my (validated!) XHTML pages - pages that rendered consistently in Gecko, Opera, and Konqueror, but that did weird things in IE.
The W3C doesn't and shouldn't have a more privledged position in this debate -- they too make mistakes and terrible calls on technology.
I'd rather have standards dictated by flawed human beings trying their honest best than by a company which has demonstrated repeatedly that it is genuinely malicious.
But [if] a browser weren't included with windows would [the web] ever have hoped to explode as fast as it did?
Was exploding as fast as it did really a good thing? Can you think of one or two things (like web standards, e-mail protocols, or new web-related legislation) that we might have been able to do better with a little more consideration?
Progress is great, I'm not questioning that. But unbridled speed-at-all-costs progress is less clearly a good thing.
I don't see much signs of an editorial conspiracy, since a few of the reviews I've seen are definitely in the realm of "very angry constructive criticism".
Yeah, there are plenty of 1-star reviews on NewEgg.
Which confuses me a bit. I've submitted 5 or 6 reviews there, all of which were basically positive ("It works!") but some of which contained a few caveats or gotchas. I tried to inlucde the sort of end-user-experience details that I wish I had been able to get before buying - stuff like "Win2K drivers not so hot - good choice under XP though" or "May require more than just a screwdriver to install." I've seen other reviews there with the same sort of useful information in them.
But about half of my submissions were rejected, and some of the others were ruthlessly pared down, eliminating the caveats. Where do the other informative reviews come from, where do the angry 1-star reviews come from, if the editors are this zealous about removing any trace of negative feedback?
The NewEgg editors don't seem very consistent in what they allow and what they don't. Although praising NewEgg's prompt delivery seems to help a review pass muster.
...even firefox (latest release) doesn't correctly pass the acid2 test. By that definition, FF isn't completely standards compliant either.
No, but it's close - it's obvious the Gecko guys are actually trying. Whereas IE appears to be deliberately flouting the rules / standards / guidelines.
Just tired of seeing another unfair MS bash.
But you're not even claiming anything chia_monkey said is counter-factual - in what way was it "unfair?" Heck, in what way was it a "bash," as opposed to a somewhat cynical reading of an unpleasant reality?
MSIE... is partially reponsible for the huge popularity the internet enjoys today.
I seem to remember it differently. MSIE was hastily tossed together from purchased and recycled components only after it became very clear that Netscape was on to something really, really big. The Web would have happened with or without IE.
...it was fairly obvious that the alliance was modding River into some sort of super assassin/warrior chick. This being something so overdone that it's cliche.
Agree completely. I just watched this trailer with the SO, and I said something like "It's not enough that she's a Super-Genius with psychic powers? She has to know kung-fu too? Cripes, she's Superman! What does she even need the rest of the gang for?"
Suddenly it the movie starts to look like Fists Of Buffy In Spaaaaaace!
But that's what's selling at the box office today, I guess.
I was posting about Mozilla, not Firefox. By "(Firefox too?)" I meant that Firefox might work the same way, or it might not - I don't (didn't) know for sure. If you say it doesn't work that way, I believe you.
Since you were responding to a post about Mozilla, and since you didn't say specifically which browser you are using, I think a reader could be forgiven for thinking (as I did) that you were also talking about Mozilla, in which case the information you posted was not correct.
Where IE7 uses a check-mark, Mozilla uses a black dot. The concept is identical.
My plug-in-free Mozilla install shows the current page in the "Go" menu with a black dot to the left of the history item.
Why would I make this stuff up?
An intruiging theory which I can't agree with.
If MS was seriously trying to limit the appeal of the Web, why push RSS (a relatively new web-based app) into the mainstream by including it in IE?
No matter how good IE or the web gets, there will always be plenty of PC-based activities that are better as local apps than as web-based apps. And local apps means using an OS, and that means a sales opportunity for MS.
Rondeau's story says: The navigation system in IE 7 shows that the web browser's most groundbreaking user interface paradigm is maturing. The drop-downs for the back and forward buttons are now combined into a single dropdown that shows the user placement with regard to pages in the back and in front.
Mozilla (Firefox too?) has had this exact thing (it's under the "Go" menu in Mozilla) for at least a couple of years now.
Actual measurements of system power consumption, running a Pentium-M on a Pentium-IV mobo, have been done. That configuration consumes much less than a comparable Pentium IV system.
Not to say there isn't even more room for improvement. But I, for one, am impressed.
PC games have obnoxiously forced the players to watch a bunch of movies advertising the game publisher and developer for some time. (Yeah, most of the time you can Esc from the movie - buy why should I have to? I paid my money.) This year, Valve patched Half-Life 2 so that if the user removes or replaces the Valve logo/movie, Steam automatically re-downloads, installs, then plays a fresh copy.
And the idea of advertising in or with games is a lot older than that anyway. Does anyone remember the Othello-like "Cool Spot" 7up game from the early 90s? Or the Sega Genesis game that was basically a giant McDonald's ad? How about the bacteria-fighting toothpaste ad/game for the Atari 8-bit computers from 1982 or so? Not to mention the newer phenomenon of music promotion through video games.
What baffles me about this is why a game developer would be so willing to invite ad-removing hackery. I get the impression from the article that this sort of ad will mostly be used in MMO type games; don't those folks have enough trouble with hacking as it is?
Hey, I'm not trying to defend the ugly status quo, I'm just pointing out that there are reasons for the way things are.
I wish the OSS movement all the best, I really do. Use quite a bit of it myself. But face facts: in a world where a 3.5" floppy is still referred to as a "hard disk" by a large percentage of PC users, Linux is a long way from mainstream, regardless of your familiarity with it.