The/. summary is pretty worthless (is anyone surprised?). This is only related to Flash inasmuch as Flash has a JavaScript VM / JIT Compiler, and that technology has been released to Mozilla so that they can take advantage of those performance improvements. At least that's how I read the news from people actually involved.
(Historical precedent: Anyone who's ever bought a retail box with a CD key that was already revoked before the box was shipped, because teh warez d00dz were using keygens that mapped onto the set of actual, legitimate keys.)
Had that happen to me back in the day when I bought a copy of Tribes 2. Unwrapped the box, popped in the CD, and bam: "This CD-Key is already in use. Please enter a valid key" or something to that effect. I ended up having to make a photocopy of the UPC and CD-Key sticker, and fax those to Sierra. Because of course, everyone has a copier and fax lying around their house.
It eventually got resolved, but man was I pissed about spending $50 only to be called a pirate and locked out of my own game. Anyone remember the days when Sierra wasn't a worthless hack of a brand?
Wish I had some mod points for ya. Ever since Myst came out, there have been about 3 quality adventure games total. Myst seems to have given developers the green light to "redfine" Adventures as boring, barely-interactive slideshows.
Gabriel Knight III, Syberia and The Longest Journey being the exceptions I can think of off the top of my head.
A close runner-up for most requested feature is proper audio/video sync. And Linux users will get that this time around, thanks largely to the purging of the OSS audio API in favor of the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA).
I think he probably meant "PPC" instead of "Mac hardware". But yeah, I think the day Apple releases OSX for commodity hardware is the day they go out of business...
I wouldn't look for it any time soon, seeing as they have extreme difficulty keeping their current MMORPG running at all. I still love and play the game though, which is a testament to how fun it is when it works. Any other pay service that went down for "emergency/extended maintenance" 2 or 3 days each month would have subscribers canceling and/or suing in droves.
Wow, sounds like you had EXACTLY the same experience with their "warranty" that I did.
I bought a 20 gig iPod from them about 3 years ago. After getting the sales pitch, I also spent the extra cash for an extended warranty form Best Buy. The salesman told me to my face that if I ever had any kind of problem, I could bring in the iPod and receive an exchange on the spot, no questions asked. The brochure he gave me outlined two kinds of service levels, along the lines of "service" and "replacement". He assured me iPods were under the "replacement" category.
Well, after a few months of heavy but careful usage, the cord that runs from the little "remote" to the ipod starts to fray and sound begins to randomly cut out as a result. I bring the thing to the local Best Buy. It takes the customer service people about 10 minutes of listening to even acknowledge that the thing is broken, but they eventually do. They then spend some time accusing me of abusing the unit, saying it's not damage from "normal wear and tear". I manage to convice them that I haven't been sitting around yanking on my headphones all day or throwing my iPod out of speeding cars. After looking at my service contract, they rummage around for another 10 minutes and come back saying they are out of my model and to come back later.
I come back a few days later, and they have my model in stock. But now the manager says they have to ship it out for repairs, and it'll be gone for 2 weeks. I say that's not acceptable, and that their own staff sold me a contract to have it instantly exchanged for a new unit. His response is basically that the salesman was wrong, and I'm out of luck. At this point I'm too furious to continue the conversation and leave.
A while later, I'm driving by a different Best Buy and figure I might as well try my luck getting this one to honor their commitment. I basically get the same routine, "we don't do exchanges on iPods, I don't know why the salesman told you that, but you're screwed". I am getting increasingly pissed off at this point, and complain my way up the customer service hierarchy to a manager who has some modicum of authority. She tries to give me a pair of no-name headphones with no remote. I tell her this is not the same thing as "we'll replace your iPod, no questions asked". Eventually, after making enough of a scene, she does the exchange. But she writes in huge letters on my receipt "DO NOT DO AN EXCHANGE FOR THIS CUSTOMER!"
Needless to say, Best Buy is not getting much repeat business from me. Either their salesmen flat-out lied to me, or they changed their policies and refused to honor existing contracts, neither of which is remotely acceptable. And this is after being accused of lying and abusing my iPod. Everyone who has needed any kind of service from them seems to have an awful experience. I can't understand how they get any repeat business, or even any business at all with all the bad press they receive.
That's kind of a mixed list. With respect to the coffee shops, unless I'm in a huge hurry I much prefer to put in my own cream and sugar. It doesn't seem to matter if it's a neighborhood shop or a Starbucks / Dunkin' Donuts...they WILL get your order wrong at least half the time. Or at least vary dramatically in their interpretation of "a little" or "a lot".
Maybe that's how they get us to accept these "convenient" cost-cutting features. Make the regular service so mind-bogglingly incompetent that doing everything yourself is much faster and less frustrating.
Boston has become Nazis with regard to parking. It's nice if you live there, since there's half a chance now you can actually park on your own street. But the last time I parked illegally (about a year ago, before I had a local permit), they towed my car and I had over $100 in fines! It's definitely worth it to spend an extra few minutes cruising for a meter than chancing the "resident parking only" areas. Plus all the meters are free from 8pm-8am, and all day on Sundays.
Don't forget the King's Quest series! I have fond memories of playing King's Quest IV on about 30 5.25" floppies, having to swap them out nearly every time you walked to the next screen. I was so envious of my friend's computer (Apple IIgs I think?) that actually had a hard drive. Kinda puts things in perspective when you realize that the junkiest little USB keychain on the market today could hold that game 100 times over.
As far as I know, it does have that feature, for the exact reasons people are complaining about here. So either it doesn't work, or the delay needs to be more like 5-10 seconds than 1 or 2. Either way, if it bothers you check Bugzilla for an existing bug on it, and if it's not there go ahead and file it.
Coming from WoW (who isn't these days?), I would definitely be hesitant to play any game that required grouping. Even at peak time, depending on what quest or instance you're trying to complete, it can take upwards of an hour to get a group of just four other people together. Forcing grouping seems to be basically giving the finger to people who don't play at peak hours. Although maybe the fact that everyone has no choice but to group would make finding partners easier.
Also, pickup groups of random people more often than not turn into horror shows that last hours and accomplish little. I routinely wind up in groups that fight through death after death to finally reach the final boss, then a key group member says "aw crap, my mom is making me do homework, sry guyz:( *log off*".
Perhaps it will be an amazing game for people who have a group of friends all on the same regular schedule, but I do not, so there's really no incentive for me to try DDO. I love being able to jump on to WoW for half an hour and actually accomplish something on my own, although I guess that changes dramatically at the level cap.
My understanding is that Firefox 2 (slated to come out sometime this summer) will have lots of front-end improvements, but Gecko is only taking fixes for egregious regressions/errors and new features that are very safe to implement. For various reasons, getting Firefox to pass Acid 2 requires some pretty major reworking of the layout engine, most of which has been deemed too unstable for Firefox 2's timeframe.
If you want to get a feel for how Firefox 3 will do, though, download a recent trunk nightly (not 1.8 branch). That's a much better reflection of the effort that's being put into Acid 2 compliance. On my machine, a recent build looks pretty good...the top-right of the head is wrong, and the mouth looks weird, but everything else is OK. You can debate to death whether their priorities are right I guess, but I just wanted to point out that Acid 2 work IS being done.
In off hours, yes, IF is much better than it used to be (and conversely, Stormwind is worse than it used to be). But at peak time, going anywhere near the auction house in either city is a total slideshow on my system. The main benefit I've seen is that even at peak time, the AH itself is more responsive. It used to take over 5 minutes on my server between the time you clicked "search" and when a list of items returned on some nights, now it's down to about 15-20 seconds at worst.
Coincidentally, today I came across a page with highlights from a "debate" with a moon hoax believer. I use quotes because it is basically him making astoundingly ignorant statements and ignoring the replies. It's a pretty funny read, and gives you an idea of the caliber of intellect you're dealing with in these arguments... http://seaofcrisis.com/ext/babb/moonman.htm.
Slashdot Mirror
The /. summary is pretty worthless (is anyone surprised?). This is only related to Flash inasmuch as Flash has a JavaScript VM / JIT Compiler, and that technology has been released to Mozilla so that they can take advantage of those performance improvements. At least that's how I read the news from people actually involved.
Brendan Eich's blog
Frank Hecker's blog
Well played
Clearly, he works for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Had that happen to me back in the day when I bought a copy of Tribes 2. Unwrapped the box, popped in the CD, and bam: "This CD-Key is already in use. Please enter a valid key" or something to that effect. I ended up having to make a photocopy of the UPC and CD-Key sticker, and fax those to Sierra. Because of course, everyone has a copier and fax lying around their house.
It eventually got resolved, but man was I pissed about spending $50 only to be called a pirate and locked out of my own game. Anyone remember the days when Sierra wasn't a worthless hack of a brand?
To be fair, Ocarina of Time was a fabulous game IMHO. Link to the Past was amazing too, but it's hard for me to pick a favorite.
Totally agree on KotOR though, one of my favorite RPGs of the last 5 years.
Wish I had some mod points for ya. Ever since Myst came out, there have been about 3 quality adventure games total. Myst seems to have given developers the green light to "redfine" Adventures as boring, barely-interactive slideshows.
Gabriel Knight III, Syberia and The Longest Journey being the exceptions I can think of off the top of my head.
Doh! Got me ; )
No, he doesn't. When modifying a quote, you enclose the change in square brackets.
Hmm, why do I get the feeling that I have read this news before?
I think he probably meant "PPC" instead of "Mac hardware". But yeah, I think the day Apple releases OSX for commodity hardware is the day they go out of business...
I wouldn't look for it any time soon, seeing as they have extreme difficulty keeping their current MMORPG running at all. I still love and play the game though, which is a testament to how fun it is when it works. Any other pay service that went down for "emergency/extended maintenance" 2 or 3 days each month would have subscribers canceling and/or suing in droves.
Wow, I should have hit preview, didn't mean to post a wall of text :(
Wow, sounds like you had EXACTLY the same experience with their "warranty" that I did. I bought a 20 gig iPod from them about 3 years ago. After getting the sales pitch, I also spent the extra cash for an extended warranty form Best Buy. The salesman told me to my face that if I ever had any kind of problem, I could bring in the iPod and receive an exchange on the spot, no questions asked. The brochure he gave me outlined two kinds of service levels, along the lines of "service" and "replacement". He assured me iPods were under the "replacement" category. Well, after a few months of heavy but careful usage, the cord that runs from the little "remote" to the ipod starts to fray and sound begins to randomly cut out as a result. I bring the thing to the local Best Buy. It takes the customer service people about 10 minutes of listening to even acknowledge that the thing is broken, but they eventually do. They then spend some time accusing me of abusing the unit, saying it's not damage from "normal wear and tear". I manage to convice them that I haven't been sitting around yanking on my headphones all day or throwing my iPod out of speeding cars. After looking at my service contract, they rummage around for another 10 minutes and come back saying they are out of my model and to come back later. I come back a few days later, and they have my model in stock. But now the manager says they have to ship it out for repairs, and it'll be gone for 2 weeks. I say that's not acceptable, and that their own staff sold me a contract to have it instantly exchanged for a new unit. His response is basically that the salesman was wrong, and I'm out of luck. At this point I'm too furious to continue the conversation and leave. A while later, I'm driving by a different Best Buy and figure I might as well try my luck getting this one to honor their commitment. I basically get the same routine, "we don't do exchanges on iPods, I don't know why the salesman told you that, but you're screwed". I am getting increasingly pissed off at this point, and complain my way up the customer service hierarchy to a manager who has some modicum of authority. She tries to give me a pair of no-name headphones with no remote. I tell her this is not the same thing as "we'll replace your iPod, no questions asked". Eventually, after making enough of a scene, she does the exchange. But she writes in huge letters on my receipt "DO NOT DO AN EXCHANGE FOR THIS CUSTOMER!" Needless to say, Best Buy is not getting much repeat business from me. Either their salesmen flat-out lied to me, or they changed their policies and refused to honor existing contracts, neither of which is remotely acceptable. And this is after being accused of lying and abusing my iPod. Everyone who has needed any kind of service from them seems to have an awful experience. I can't understand how they get any repeat business, or even any business at all with all the bad press they receive.
That's kind of a mixed list. With respect to the coffee shops, unless I'm in a huge hurry I much prefer to put in my own cream and sugar. It doesn't seem to matter if it's a neighborhood shop or a Starbucks / Dunkin' Donuts...they WILL get your order wrong at least half the time. Or at least vary dramatically in their interpretation of "a little" or "a lot". Maybe that's how they get us to accept these "convenient" cost-cutting features. Make the regular service so mind-bogglingly incompetent that doing everything yourself is much faster and less frustrating.
Boston has become Nazis with regard to parking. It's nice if you live there, since there's half a chance now you can actually park on your own street. But the last time I parked illegally (about a year ago, before I had a local permit), they towed my car and I had over $100 in fines! It's definitely worth it to spend an extra few minutes cruising for a meter than chancing the "resident parking only" areas. Plus all the meters are free from 8pm-8am, and all day on Sundays.
Don't forget the King's Quest series! I have fond memories of playing King's Quest IV on about 30 5.25" floppies, having to swap them out nearly every time you walked to the next screen. I was so envious of my friend's computer (Apple IIgs I think?) that actually had a hard drive. Kinda puts things in perspective when you realize that the junkiest little USB keychain on the market today could hold that game 100 times over.
Means essentially the same thing in Spanish, for what it's worth.
I went to pre-school with Ray Ozzie's son; I have some photos of us hanging out on the playground. Too bad we didn't stay in touch :)
The post wasn't that funny, but the fact that it got modded "Insightful" sure is :).
As far as I know, it does have that feature, for the exact reasons people are complaining about here. So either it doesn't work, or the delay needs to be more like 5-10 seconds than 1 or 2. Either way, if it bothers you check Bugzilla for an existing bug on it, and if it's not there go ahead and file it.
Coming from WoW (who isn't these days?), I would definitely be hesitant to play any game that required grouping. Even at peak time, depending on what quest or instance you're trying to complete, it can take upwards of an hour to get a group of just four other people together. Forcing grouping seems to be basically giving the finger to people who don't play at peak hours. Although maybe the fact that everyone has no choice but to group would make finding partners easier.
:( *log off*".
Also, pickup groups of random people more often than not turn into horror shows that last hours and accomplish little. I routinely wind up in groups that fight through death after death to finally reach the final boss, then a key group member says "aw crap, my mom is making me do homework, sry guyz
Perhaps it will be an amazing game for people who have a group of friends all on the same regular schedule, but I do not, so there's really no incentive for me to try DDO. I love being able to jump on to WoW for half an hour and actually accomplish something on my own, although I guess that changes dramatically at the level cap.
My understanding is that Firefox 2 (slated to come out sometime this summer) will have lots of front-end improvements, but Gecko is only taking fixes for egregious regressions/errors and new features that are very safe to implement. For various reasons, getting Firefox to pass Acid 2 requires some pretty major reworking of the layout engine, most of which has been deemed too unstable for Firefox 2's timeframe.
If you want to get a feel for how Firefox 3 will do, though, download a recent trunk nightly (not 1.8 branch). That's a much better reflection of the effort that's being put into Acid 2 compliance. On my machine, a recent build looks pretty good...the top-right of the head is wrong, and the mouth looks weird, but everything else is OK. You can debate to death whether their priorities are right I guess, but I just wanted to point out that Acid 2 work IS being done.
In off hours, yes, IF is much better than it used to be (and conversely, Stormwind is worse than it used to be). But at peak time, going anywhere near the auction house in either city is a total slideshow on my system. The main benefit I've seen is that even at peak time, the AH itself is more responsive. It used to take over 5 minutes on my server between the time you clicked "search" and when a list of items returned on some nights, now it's down to about 15-20 seconds at worst.
Coincidentally, today I came across a page with highlights from a "debate" with a moon hoax believer. I use quotes because it is basically him making astoundingly ignorant statements and ignoring the replies. It's a pretty funny read, and gives you an idea of the caliber of intellect you're dealing with in these arguments... http://seaofcrisis.com/ext/babb/moonman.htm.