For more discussion on the new UI themes and changes, there's a thread going on at mozillaZine about it.
The icons will grow on you after a while, and they're still making refinements and changes to the icons and backgrounds. Personally, I think the Back/Forward buttons are pretty decent, it's the rest (Reload/Stop/New tab/window) that looks a little too simple and out of place. Can't say I really agree with using different themes across different Windows versions too, this has to be the first application I know that tries that.
How the fuck this got modded Informative I have no idea, but here are the firsthand facts from someone living there - water wastage is indeed illegal, but the context in which it is applied has always been towards wanton wastage of public water for non-constructive purposes. Private usage of water has never been regulated - you're free to do exactly what you want with the water flowing out of your taps; just be expected to pay for it. On the other hand, public water (aka those from public taps) wastage is regulated, and there should is no reason why it shouldn't be. While washing your cars with water from public taps or using them to fill up water guns for a friendly water fight has and will always be fine, there should be no reason to allow people to use up a swimming pool's worth of water just to clean a dirty windscreen.
As for the gum and the subway issue, I don't know where you live, but over here, automation means the lack of human oversight, so to err on safety is always better for commuters. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be flung out of a high speed train onto a set of electric rails just because they decided that hey, a door that won't shut isn't as important as sticking to the schedule. As a citizen and frequent user of said train system, despite what was reported, gum pretty much affected the running of the trains. What gum certainly was though was a public nuisance that stuck to your shoes or pants if you were unlucky enough. I'll concede that I don't think the magnitude of the problem back then was large enough to warrant a complete ban.
In any case, you clearly have no idea of what you're talking about. Gum was banned in 1992, and your other posts on kids and drugs (categorically false BTW) makes it abundantly clear that (a) you've never stepped foot in Singapore (b) you have no idea what is going on in Singapore.
Just FYI, Opera has a "Windows Native" theme that picks up the current system theme you're using.
It doesn't look as pretty as most of Opera's themes, but in terms of style integration, it's considerably superior to any Firefox release. Heck, Firefox versions > 1.5 require a CSS hack to get proper menus in Windows Classic mode.
The problem with your analogy simply is that different forms of entertainment provide different forms of value, and that it's only fair to compare within the TYPE of entertainment itself.
If we were to simply go by cost/hour as you mentioned, then no one would ever go for expensive dinners at a glitzy restaurant, or fly overseas for a holiday. Instead, they'd be cooped up at home watching Cable all day long.
Quite clearly, different forms of entertainment have different values on them, and comparing within the form itself (in this case, MMORPGs), WoW falls short on multiple levels. The high downtimes for WoW make it an adverse value proposition compared to other MMORPGs (e.g. FFXI, CoH/CoV, Guild Wars, EQ2, Eve Online etc), and the lag factor seriously hampers having fun, further reducing the quality of gameplay when its actually available.
Pray tell - which IDE doesn't? At some point or the other, just about every IDE I've used so far (Delphi, NetBeans, Eclipse, JBuilder) has decided to simply go belly-up and either stop responding to me or start acting in really weird ways.
Modern IDEs are complex beasts - they've got to parse your code, handle reflection, manage multiple debug processes et al. While I agree that they should ideally be bug-free, complex things often break somewhere or the other.
There don't seem to be any directly corresponding ones for Firefox 1.0.2, closest it seems would be ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nigh tly/2005-03-14-17-aviary1.0.1/firefox-1.0.2.en-US. win32.zip.
For Thunderbird 1.0.2, I've found that the http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/2005-03-17-12-aviary1.0.1/thunderbird-win 32.zip has an match on the md5sum for thunderbird.exe as compared to the official release.
Apparently mozilla.org took it upon themselves to remove the ZIP archive method of distribution, citing various incompatibility problems and the need to "simplify the test matrix". What stinks about this is that the ZIP method was (and still is) one of the cleanest and most convenient way to install Firefox. Now they've gone and removed it, without taking in any user input at all. In fact, most users aren't exactly too pleased with the decision, as evidenced by the comments in both blogs.
Oh well, won't be the first dictatorial decision undertaken by Mozilla (branding, the Qute icon change, the naming fiasco..)
1.4.2_06 is the latest. You can get it at here. Alternatively, use 1.5.0.
Auto-update is broken though. Hasn't been working for some time for me at least (always tells me I have the latest version). Sun might want to look into this.
Speaking from experience (Windows XP), the chipset doesn't really require drivers per se. The only thing that becomes non-functional when you don't use the nForce drivers is the on-board LAN (which I assume XP doesn't have built-in drivers for).
The chipset drivers supposedly improve overall performance though, although there have been niggles with the IDE drivers at one point of time.
DNA drivers are merely a repackage of ATI's 4.12 beta drivers with some registry tweaks/modified DLLs.
Those 4.12 beta drivers supposedly increase Half-Life 2 performance by a great deal though, so you might want to give them a try.
Slashdot Mirror
For more discussion on the new UI themes and changes, there's a thread going on at mozillaZine about it.
The icons will grow on you after a while, and they're still making refinements and changes to the icons and backgrounds. Personally, I think the Back/Forward buttons are pretty decent, it's the rest (Reload/Stop/New tab/window) that looks a little too simple and out of place. Can't say I really agree with using different themes across different Windows versions too, this has to be the first application I know that tries that.
How the fuck this got modded Informative I have no idea, but here are the firsthand facts from someone living there - water wastage is indeed illegal, but the context in which it is applied has always been towards wanton wastage of public water for non-constructive purposes. Private usage of water has never been regulated - you're free to do exactly what you want with the water flowing out of your taps; just be expected to pay for it. On the other hand, public water (aka those from public taps) wastage is regulated, and there should is no reason why it shouldn't be. While washing your cars with water from public taps or using them to fill up water guns for a friendly water fight has and will always be fine, there should be no reason to allow people to use up a swimming pool's worth of water just to clean a dirty windscreen.
As for the gum and the subway issue, I don't know where you live, but over here, automation means the lack of human oversight, so to err on safety is always better for commuters. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be flung out of a high speed train onto a set of electric rails just because they decided that hey, a door that won't shut isn't as important as sticking to the schedule. As a citizen and frequent user of said train system, despite what was reported, gum pretty much affected the running of the trains. What gum certainly was though was a public nuisance that stuck to your shoes or pants if you were unlucky enough. I'll concede that I don't think the magnitude of the problem back then was large enough to warrant a complete ban.
In any case, you clearly have no idea of what you're talking about. Gum was banned in 1992, and your other posts on kids and drugs (categorically false BTW) makes it abundantly clear that (a) you've never stepped foot in Singapore (b) you have no idea what is going on in Singapore.
Just FYI, Opera has a "Windows Native" theme that picks up the current system theme you're using.
It doesn't look as pretty as most of Opera's themes, but in terms of style integration, it's considerably superior to any Firefox release. Heck, Firefox versions > 1.5 require a CSS hack to get proper menus in Windows Classic mode.
The problem with your analogy simply is that different forms of entertainment provide different forms of value, and that it's only fair to compare within the TYPE of entertainment itself.
If we were to simply go by cost/hour as you mentioned, then no one would ever go for expensive dinners at a glitzy restaurant, or fly overseas for a holiday. Instead, they'd be cooped up at home watching Cable all day long.
Quite clearly, different forms of entertainment have different values on them, and comparing within the form itself (in this case, MMORPGs), WoW falls short on multiple levels. The high downtimes for WoW make it an adverse value proposition compared to other MMORPGs (e.g. FFXI, CoH/CoV, Guild Wars, EQ2, Eve Online etc), and the lag factor seriously hampers having fun, further reducing the quality of gameplay when its actually available.
Amazingly enough, they have an offical booth babes website.
Pray tell - which IDE doesn't? At some point or the other, just about every IDE I've used so far (Delphi, NetBeans, Eclipse, JBuilder) has decided to simply go belly-up and either stop responding to me or start acting in really weird ways.
Modern IDEs are complex beasts - they've got to parse your code, handle reflection, manage multiple debug processes et al. While I agree that they should ideally be bug-free, complex things often break somewhere or the other.
I'd say this is closer to the Gundam/Mechwarrior series rather than Evangelions (since the Eva series is pretty much organic in nature).
:)
Of course, if this will lead to hot mysterious blue-haired girls with red eyes, then I'm all the more for it
Consolas looks particularly impressive. Know any place to get them as of now? :)
There don't seem to be any directly corresponding ones for Firefox 1.0.2, closest it seems would be ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nigh tly/2005-03-14-17-aviary1.0.1/firefox-1.0.2.en-US. win32.zip.
For Thunderbird 1.0.2, I've found that the http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird /nightly/2005-03-17-12-aviary1.0.1/thunderbird-win 32.zip has an match on the md5sum for thunderbird.exe as compared to the official release.
Apparently mozilla.org took it upon themselves to remove the ZIP archive method of distribution, citing various incompatibility problems and the need to "simplify the test matrix". What stinks about this is that the ZIP method was (and still is) one of the cleanest and most convenient way to install Firefox. Now they've gone and removed it, without taking in any user input at all. In fact, most users aren't exactly too pleased with the decision, as evidenced by the comments in both blogs.
Oh well, won't be the first dictatorial decision undertaken by Mozilla (branding, the Qute icon change, the naming fiasco..)
1.4.2_06 is the latest. You can get it at here. Alternatively, use 1.5.0.
Auto-update is broken though. Hasn't been working for some time for me at least (always tells me I have the latest version). Sun might want to look into this.
Speaking from experience (Windows XP), the chipset doesn't really require drivers per se. The only thing that becomes non-functional when you don't use the nForce drivers is the on-board LAN (which I assume XP doesn't have built-in drivers for).
The chipset drivers supposedly improve overall performance though, although there have been niggles with the IDE drivers at one point of time.
DNA drivers are merely a repackage of ATI's 4.12 beta drivers with some registry tweaks/modified DLLs. Those 4.12 beta drivers supposedly increase Half-Life 2 performance by a great deal though, so you might want to give them a try.