I think a lot of the complaints about laggy play were unfair given the networks people were playing over (no fast action game works well when pings get to 700ms or more).
Tribes did ok. It was the exception, not the rule though-- a lot of games in that era (like MechWarrior III) were simply terrible.
BTW, do you have any insight on why network code seems to be one of those things that's never a "solved problem?" I mean, I tried America's Army 3 the other day, and it was as bad as MechWarrior III... it was crazy. There have been so many hundreds of games with good netcode, do they just go out of their way to make things suck?
The two aren't mutually-exclusive. If they were intending to release it as GPL all along, maybe they were only in violation in the first place because their legal team moves slowly. There's not necessarily any conspiracy here.
BTW, stop being such a pedant. We all know a trackball works the same as a mouse, you didn't *really* expect me to list every single classification of input device that can use hover controls and every single one that couldn't. If you know what the fuck I *meant*, and I know you did, then don't bother posting.
Even if you have a phone where hover controls *happen* to work, they still don't fucking work on fucking tablet PCs, so they're still a fucking bad idea for a UI.
Or you can go back to the old style of slashdot in your user preferences.
The "old style" of Slashdot isn't available anymore. Or, rather, it has a bunch of crap mixed-and-matched from the new version. For example, the mouse-over controls I'm talking about *are* on the "old style" homepage.
Also, if you click the wrong link to navigate, you find yourself violently thrown into the "new style". For example, view a thread with "old style" on (like this one: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1316819&cid=28846269 ) then click the article title in the gray bar at the top-- BAM, welcome to the "new style".
Oh, and there's no way to get back to the "old style" user page, either. It's completely gone now.
Believe me, if Slashdot had just left the "old style" pages alone, I wouldn't be complaining. I'd just turn it on and shut up.
New Yorkers have shown their ingenuity in fizzling out countless disasters according to the action and disaster movies I've seen. Any problems that happen in Kansas, however, will eat a path of destruction until it reaches the outskirts of New York City, just before the crackpot scientist (who happens to be a close, personal friend of the president) is able to unleash his creatively-devised weapon to stop the problem, and burn it back to its core.
Hey! You're being entirely unfair!
It's just as likely that the crackpot scientist is an ex-husband of one of the President's advisers.
Well that's a pretty big one, don't you think? Considering that the whole point of add-ons is to add features. And that Firefox, for example, has thousands of add-ons.
So does IE. What's your point?
The greatest PR victory of the Mozilla camp was somehow convincing tons of people that IE doesn't support add-ins when, in fact, IE has supported add-ins for longer than Firefox has existed. Someday I hope to debate with an IE hater who actually knows what features IE actually has, but I'm not holding my breath.
Hah! You think that's bad? Try going to your user page on an iPhone wanting to find out which posts have been modded-- OH WAIT YOU CAN'T because the page flows ALL wrong and the moderation scores are obstructed by a pointless right-hand DIV you can't turn off.
Oh and just as a tip: "hover" controls, like those used to add/remove tags to posts on the Slashdot homepage, DON'T WORK ON DEVICES WITH NO MOUSE. Like an iPhone, or Tablet PC. Please, everybody, stop using these.
We use "context switch" as the term around here. Most non-IT people seem to understand what it means, or at least pick it up quickly enough. "Thrashing" is good too, though.
My biggest problem right now is a new manager who simply doesn't get the concept.
It's easy to offer a choice of browsers - and browser have functional, non-cosmetic differences.
Really?... like what?
I guess most browsers allow add-ins, but some don't. That's the only one I can think of off the top of my head. Oh and I guess a couple browsers run tabs in different processes for stability, but IE8 already has that.
Of course, this being Slashdot, you're probably going to come back at me with a long list of features IE6 lacked, without realizing that IE's current version is actually 8.
Having everyone on IE makes the whole internet subject to Microsoft's decisions instead of web standards, and costs tons of developer time.
Except:
1) It doesn't. IE8 is on-par, standards-wise, with all other browsers. (No, Microsoft doesn't have a time machine to fix IE6, and no, Microsoft doesn't have a hypnosis machine to get large corporations to stop using IE6. So no matter what you do, the IE6 problem remains, you'll just have to cope with it.)
2) Since there's nothing to stop people from using alternate browsers now, this decision does absolutely nothing to change things.
It also gives Microsoft the advantage in promoting their development platforms and tools. After all, if everyone uses Windows and IE, why not use Windows Server and IIS and.NET and Silverlight and ActiveX and blink tags?
That's a stupid statement. As if there's some inherent difference between a webpage served from IIS and one served from Apache. Or one generated using JSP and one generated using.NET. If Silverlight is chosen, it's because it's a good technology.
Oh, and ActiveX-- Microsoft *already* does everything they can to discourage its use. (See above comment about lacking a time machine.)
Take a look at how slowly the web developed while IE was a monolith, and how fast it's developing with a lot of browser competition.
And why was it a monolithic environment? Well, let's see: Netscape/Mozilla fucking gave up.
News flash: when you don't release a product for 3 years, all your market share disappears! News flash: products with no competition aren't developed! Of course the market stagnated; blame Netscape/Mozilla as much as Microsoft. What did they *think* was going to happen?
In a couple of years you'll be playing FPS games in your browser, dragging and dropping files in and out, playing games that don't depend on any plugins, and more.
Just FYI, you could do all that 5 years ago using ActiveX. OH SNAP!
Even if you feel like MS is being meddled with, it seems pretty clear that it's going to create more competition and be a good thing for the web.
Government sticking its filthy nose in business is *never* a good thing. Whether it involves the web or not is irrelevant.
Then how come they have the lowest market share even among alternate browsers? They must be doing *something* wrong. I know that I've tried and rejected it.
Anti-trust actions are about enabling people to make their choice based on the best product,
People can do that RIGHT NOW, though. What's stopping them? Nothing.
Which is exactly what you say you want.
And is exactly what we already have. Opera can't get people to use their browser because their browser is flawed in some way, or they lack marketing resources to advertise it. But Microsoft has nothing to do with it.
How popular is Opera on OS X? A platform where Microsoft holds practically no influence at all?
No they didn't. They filed a Antitrust complaint, big difference.
No there's not.
Both of them involve hiring lawyers, and NOT writing better software. At best it's a trivial difference. Call me crazy, but I'd rather see Opera compete with Microsoft by writing better software.
So? 99% of the people who buy cars use the steering wheel that comes with the car. Of course an aftermarket exists for steering wheels, but you don't see the car dealership presenting you with a long list of possible steering wheels for your car purchase when you buy it. And somehow nobody has any problem with this.
Some of them, like a few IT people I know, say "IE does what I want, why would I change to another browser?" even though people repeatedly point out all the security flaws in IE.
To be fair, IE has advanced in leaps and bounds. IE 7&8 run in a security sandbox on OSes that support it (i.e. Vista and Windows 7). IE 8 has process separation for tabs, something that Firefox doesn't yet have.
In short, make sure you don't fall into the trap of thinking IE6 is still what IE is like. Go use IE8 for a week, and set a new baseline-- IE is actually quite good nowadays.
That doesn't really change the meaning of the article. Whether people are responding better to ads because of the cashback or because of some other reason, the *point* is that people are responding better to ads.
Bing isn't an inferior search engine. It's worse in some ways, but significantly better in others. It's certainly better than Yahoo's (the number 2 in search.)
I disagree. Many or even most Windows users aren't smart enough to know that another browser exists or even that it is possible for another browser to run on their computer, after all - how can you explore the internet without internet explorer?
At one time, that applied to Xerox, Band-Aid, Rollerblades, and GM/Ford/Chrysler too. What changed? Why can't Opera sell their browser the same way that, say, Canon sells photocopiers?
I'm not saying it's not a challenge, but it's obviously possible and Opera isn't even trying. They just sued.
* ATT, Verizon using the court system to increase profits = bad * SCO using the court system to increase profits = bad * Opera using the court system to increase profits = good
Microsoft already has an awesome rendering engine that makes Trident look like chopped liver. They use it in Expression Web, and Visual Studio. All it needs is some optimization and a Javascript engine.
But that's all besides the point; if Microsoft changed from Trident, they'd break compatibility with thousands of poorly-coded intranet apps which rely on proprietary Jscript and ActiveX bullcrap. If Microsoft even tried, their large corporate customers would politely convince them otherwise. (i.e. threaten to pull millions of dollars of business.)
Repeat after me: "Google is not the encyclopedia of life and wisdom". Yes, Microsoft has, over the years, repeatedly stated that their goal is to wipe Linux off the face of the earth--in so many words, mind you.
And yet your post has NO citation, so it's completely worthless. Where should I go to look? Bing.com?
Linux has attained what Microsoft took nearly 30 years to attain.
It's much easier when you're the fourth or fifth one in line. You can learn from the mistakes of your competitors.
Excuse the stupid question, but it's not something easy to Google: is Avira the one that has annoying noises and talks to you? Someone recommended a great anti-virus package to me once, and it turned out to be the most irritating piece of software I've ever run.
Slashdot Mirror
I think a lot of the complaints about laggy play were unfair given the networks people were playing over (no fast action game works well when pings get to 700ms or more).
Tribes did ok. It was the exception, not the rule though-- a lot of games in that era (like MechWarrior III) were simply terrible.
BTW, do you have any insight on why network code seems to be one of those things that's never a "solved problem?" I mean, I tried America's Army 3 the other day, and it was as bad as MechWarrior III... it was crazy. There have been so many hundreds of games with good netcode, do they just go out of their way to make things suck?
The two aren't mutually-exclusive. If they were intending to release it as GPL all along, maybe they were only in violation in the first place because their legal team moves slowly. There's not necessarily any conspiracy here.
Why are people obsessed over this? Does it matter? Either way, the code is GPL now, right?
BTW, stop being such a pedant. We all know a trackball works the same as a mouse, you didn't *really* expect me to list every single classification of input device that can use hover controls and every single one that couldn't. If you know what the fuck I *meant*, and I know you did, then don't bother posting.
Even if you have a phone where hover controls *happen* to work, they still don't fucking work on fucking tablet PCs, so they're still a fucking bad idea for a UI.
Thanks.
Or you can go back to the old style of slashdot in your user preferences.
The "old style" of Slashdot isn't available anymore. Or, rather, it has a bunch of crap mixed-and-matched from the new version. For example, the mouse-over controls I'm talking about *are* on the "old style" homepage.
Also, if you click the wrong link to navigate, you find yourself violently thrown into the "new style". For example, view a thread with "old style" on (like this one: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1316819&cid=28846269 ) then click the article title in the gray bar at the top-- BAM, welcome to the "new style".
Oh, and there's no way to get back to the "old style" user page, either. It's completely gone now.
Believe me, if Slashdot had just left the "old style" pages alone, I wouldn't be complaining. I'd just turn it on and shut up.
Here's a thought: regardless of where it's build, the dangerous part will be underground. Last I heard, tornadoes don't burrow.
Yah, but gophers do! Think about it...
New Yorkers have shown their ingenuity in fizzling out countless disasters according to the action and disaster movies I've seen. Any problems that happen in Kansas, however, will eat a path of destruction until it reaches the outskirts of New York City, just before the crackpot scientist (who happens to be a close, personal friend of the president) is able to unleash his creatively-devised weapon to stop the problem, and burn it back to its core.
Hey! You're being entirely unfair!
It's just as likely that the crackpot scientist is an ex-husband of one of the President's advisers.
Just as long as it has a nuclear bomb in the middle, and warning lights carefully-timed to cause seizures.
Well that's a pretty big one, don't you think? Considering that the whole point of add-ons is to add features. And that Firefox, for example, has thousands of add-ons.
So does IE. What's your point?
The greatest PR victory of the Mozilla camp was somehow convincing tons of people that IE doesn't support add-ins when, in fact, IE has supported add-ins for longer than Firefox has existed. Someday I hope to debate with an IE hater who actually knows what features IE actually has, but I'm not holding my breath.
Hah! You think that's bad? Try going to your user page on an iPhone wanting to find out which posts have been modded-- OH WAIT YOU CAN'T because the page flows ALL wrong and the moderation scores are obstructed by a pointless right-hand DIV you can't turn off.
Oh and just as a tip: "hover" controls, like those used to add/remove tags to posts on the Slashdot homepage, DON'T WORK ON DEVICES WITH NO MOUSE. Like an iPhone, or Tablet PC. Please, everybody, stop using these.
We use "context switch" as the term around here. Most non-IT people seem to understand what it means, or at least pick it up quickly enough. "Thrashing" is good too, though.
My biggest problem right now is a new manager who simply doesn't get the concept.
Ironically enough, I have a meeting to attend in 3 minutes.
Please, oh please, tell me it's about firing your web developer!
Wow. That is a terrible car analogy.
Probably, yes.
It's easy to offer a choice of browsers - and browser have functional, non-cosmetic differences.
Really? ... like what?
I guess most browsers allow add-ins, but some don't. That's the only one I can think of off the top of my head. Oh and I guess a couple browsers run tabs in different processes for stability, but IE8 already has that.
Of course, this being Slashdot, you're probably going to come back at me with a long list of features IE6 lacked, without realizing that IE's current version is actually 8.
Having everyone on IE makes the whole internet subject to Microsoft's decisions instead of web standards, and costs tons of developer time.
Except:
1) It doesn't. IE8 is on-par, standards-wise, with all other browsers. (No, Microsoft doesn't have a time machine to fix IE6, and no, Microsoft doesn't have a hypnosis machine to get large corporations to stop using IE6. So no matter what you do, the IE6 problem remains, you'll just have to cope with it.)
2) Since there's nothing to stop people from using alternate browsers now, this decision does absolutely nothing to change things.
It also gives Microsoft the advantage in promoting their development platforms and tools. After all, if everyone uses Windows and IE, why not use Windows Server and IIS and .NET and Silverlight and ActiveX and blink tags?
That's a stupid statement. As if there's some inherent difference between a webpage served from IIS and one served from Apache. Or one generated using JSP and one generated using .NET. If Silverlight is chosen, it's because it's a good technology.
Oh, and ActiveX-- Microsoft *already* does everything they can to discourage its use. (See above comment about lacking a time machine.)
Take a look at how slowly the web developed while IE was a monolith, and how fast it's developing with a lot of browser competition.
And why was it a monolithic environment? Well, let's see: Netscape/Mozilla fucking gave up.
News flash: when you don't release a product for 3 years, all your market share disappears! News flash: products with no competition aren't developed! Of course the market stagnated; blame Netscape/Mozilla as much as Microsoft. What did they *think* was going to happen?
In a couple of years you'll be playing FPS games in your browser, dragging and dropping files in and out, playing games that don't depend on any plugins, and more.
Just FYI, you could do all that 5 years ago using ActiveX. OH SNAP!
Even if you feel like MS is being meddled with, it seems pretty clear that it's going to create more competition and be a good thing for the web.
Government sticking its filthy nose in business is *never* a good thing. Whether it involves the web or not is irrelevant.
Opera already write very good software (ime).
Then how come they have the lowest market share even among alternate browsers? They must be doing *something* wrong. I know that I've tried and rejected it.
Anti-trust actions are about enabling people to make their choice based on the best product,
People can do that RIGHT NOW, though. What's stopping them? Nothing.
Which is exactly what you say you want.
And is exactly what we already have. Opera can't get people to use their browser because their browser is flawed in some way, or they lack marketing resources to advertise it. But Microsoft has nothing to do with it.
How popular is Opera on OS X? A platform where Microsoft holds practically no influence at all?
No they didn't. They filed a Antitrust complaint, big difference.
No there's not.
Both of them involve hiring lawyers, and NOT writing better software. At best it's a trivial difference. Call me crazy, but I'd rather see Opera compete with Microsoft by writing better software.
So? 99% of the people who buy cars use the steering wheel that comes with the car. Of course an aftermarket exists for steering wheels, but you don't see the car dealership presenting you with a long list of possible steering wheels for your car purchase when you buy it. And somehow nobody has any problem with this.
Some of them, like a few IT people I know, say "IE does what I want, why would I change to another browser?" even though people repeatedly point out all the security flaws in IE.
To be fair, IE has advanced in leaps and bounds. IE 7&8 run in a security sandbox on OSes that support it (i.e. Vista and Windows 7). IE 8 has process separation for tabs, something that Firefox doesn't yet have.
In short, make sure you don't fall into the trap of thinking IE6 is still what IE is like. Go use IE8 for a week, and set a new baseline-- IE is actually quite good nowadays.
That doesn't really change the meaning of the article. Whether people are responding better to ads because of the cashback or because of some other reason, the *point* is that people are responding better to ads.
Bing isn't an inferior search engine. It's worse in some ways, but significantly better in others. It's certainly better than Yahoo's (the number 2 in search.)
I'm 30 and my school district didn't even attempt to teach cursive. I don't know if that was unique or not.
I disagree. Many or even most Windows users aren't smart enough to know that another browser exists or even that it is possible for another browser to run on their computer, after all - how can you explore the internet without internet explorer?
At one time, that applied to Xerox, Band-Aid, Rollerblades, and GM/Ford/Chrysler too. What changed? Why can't Opera sell their browser the same way that, say, Canon sells photocopiers?
I'm not saying it's not a challenge, but it's obviously possible and Opera isn't even trying. They just sued.
Just to clarify:
* ATT, Verizon using the court system to increase profits = bad
* SCO using the court system to increase profits = bad
* Opera using the court system to increase profits = good
Microsoft already has an awesome rendering engine that makes Trident look like chopped liver. They use it in Expression Web, and Visual Studio. All it needs is some optimization and a Javascript engine.
But that's all besides the point; if Microsoft changed from Trident, they'd break compatibility with thousands of poorly-coded intranet apps which rely on proprietary Jscript and ActiveX bullcrap. If Microsoft even tried, their large corporate customers would politely convince them otherwise. (i.e. threaten to pull millions of dollars of business.)
Repeat after me: "Google is not the encyclopedia of life and wisdom". Yes, Microsoft has, over the years, repeatedly stated that their goal is to wipe Linux off the face of the earth--in so many words, mind you.
And yet your post has NO citation, so it's completely worthless. Where should I go to look? Bing.com?
Linux has attained what Microsoft took nearly 30 years to attain.
It's much easier when you're the fourth or fifth one in line. You can learn from the mistakes of your competitors.
Excuse the stupid question, but it's not something easy to Google: is Avira the one that has annoying noises and talks to you? Someone recommended a great anti-virus package to me once, and it turned out to be the most irritating piece of software I've ever run.