CSS has multiple units of measurement, but it's impossible to do even simple math with them. For instance, I can't make a DIV 10em+10px wide. Why not?! Surely I can't be the only one on Earth who has thought of doing something so basic. Instead I have to enclose my DIV measuring in ems in another DIV measuring in pixels. Ridiculous. (And you can't pre-calculate the result because "em" varies based on font size.)
Vertical centering in CSS is ridiculously difficult. I'm sure I'll get a hundred web developers telling me that vertical centering is a bad idea, yada yada, but that's not the point: The point is that using Tables for layout (the very thing CSS is supposed to replace), vertical centering is ridiculously easy. How did something ridiculously easy become ridiculously hard? How is it the replacement technology (CSS) doesn't even do everything the technology it's replacing (table layouts) does?
I looked into CSS to update some old websites before basically just saying "screw it" and going back to good old Tables. Tables work all the time in every browser (almost), and are more powerful than CSS... the only downside is that they have to download a bit more data, but I'll take that tradeoff.
most of them are in it for the true advancement of technology.
More like ideology. If you're in it for the advancement of technology, no company on Earth can get your advancement more widespread than Microsoft right now. Not Apple, not Google, not IBM.
Come to think of it, if they're in it for the advancement of technology, why isn't Open Office more advanced than MS Office? Why isn't GIMP more advanced than Photoshop? The majority of open source projects are clones of commercial projects, only without the polish and features.
Of course, that meant that they couldn't turn and leverage new trends like modems and ftp and this newfangled http thing,
Ok, I keep seeing this claim that Microsoft was way behind the Internet curve... and I always wonder, "compared to WHAT?" MacOS at the time didn't even supply TCP/IP with the OS, you had to download a third-party control panel called MacTCP. God knows Linux hardly worked at all in that timeframe. Meanwhile, Windows 95 supported ethernet and modems all built-in and came with a browser.
In what way was Microsoft behind the Internet curve, and compared to whom? Let's stomp out this piece of FUD once and for all.
First of all, the worst (worst) movie ever is probably "Manos: The Hands of Fate". The worst (entertaining) movie is generally considered to be "Plan 9 from Outer Space." Gigli isn't even in the bottom 25.
Second of all, I thought The Day After Tomorrow wasn't that bad once you accepted the premise. (And really, the premise wasn't any harder to swallow than 'space empires fighting rebels a long time ago far away'.) The scene with the timber wolves in the frozen Russian cargo ship outside the New York Public Library was almost surreal, and I enjoyed it.
Based on articles like this one, the Liberal position seems to be: "Run around like crazy screaming at the top of your lungs that the sky is falling and flailing your arms."
This is compared to the Conservative position, which generally seems to be: "Whoa guys, calm down and think this through a little, huh?"
Given those choices, I'll take the Conservative position every time.
Based on how far behind it is on other Office features, I'd guess around 2012. OpenOffice is a fine piece of software, but an Office competitor it's not.
Of course, there are improvements and additional features, but nothing really really *really* major.
I call BS on that. Maybe for a home user, but I work in an office that *survives* on Office Live (or whatever they're calling it these days). And there isn't a single competitor to that right now, nobody else is even close.
ODF doesn't support all of Word's features (in a compatible way; of course if Microsoft extended the format to support all of Word's features, imagine the outcry!) It's very likely that ODF also doesn't support all of Keynote's features, and possible that it doesn't support all of Pages' features.
People on this board make it sound like not supporting ODF is the worst thing ever... in reality, a lot of products *can't* support ODF simply because the file format doesn't support the features they have.
Adobe Photoshop runs on Macintosh, and Adobe's website isn't the UGLIEST PRODUCT WEBSITE I've seen in the last 5 years. That might give them a slight edge.
(I love how, to add insult to injury, you fill your crappy website with screenshots of your crappy UI editing horrible ugly images. I'm sure I'm really impressed that your software can turn people into horribly mutated demons, but is that the best way to sell it? Photoshop Elements has a picture of a cute kid superimposed on a flower.)
Just a heads-up-- hire a decent website developer!
The only reason behind the $100 charge per year is the same reason they charge for approving drivers, or they charge for Xbox Live:
To keep the riff-raff out.
If you're paying $100 a year, you're likely a responsible enough adult that you'll not constantly submit Xbox Live Arcade games that completely suck, have no chance at being published, and waste a lot of Microsoft's time. (They charge for driver certification so they driver makers don't start using Microsoft as a free QA service. Similar concept. They charge for Xbox Live subscriptions so assholes don't make 30 of them to dodge bans.)
It's a valid practice. $100 a year is NOTHING to anybody actually interested in game development, the only one is hurts are little kids who would produce crap games anyway. (And even THEN, they can produce as many crap games on PC as they want; the $100 only applies if you want to run it on an Xbox.)
I like the insane leaps of logic required to make giving free dev tools away to the public look like a bad thing. While you're making up anti-Microsoft bullshit, remember that releasing stuff like this is what is going to give Microsoft a huge lead in console gaming and leave Sony in the dust.
My favorite one in OS X is how Software Update will cancel shutdown so it can show you a dialog saying it wants to shut down!!
Try this: Do a update that requires a reboot. When finished, Software Update will show a dialog that says you need to either reboot or shut down. Fine. So I switch to my applications with open documents, close them one by one, then when finished I go to the Apple menu and select "Restart." What do I get? Another dialog saying "Software Update has cancelled Restart!" Why did Software Update cancel it? Why, because it was too busy telling me to restart my computer to figure out that I WAS restarting the goddamned computer!
Remember back when Apple used to QA their products? Seems like a long time now...
You can decline the updates, but Live will force them on you if you want to buy any media from it, or any Xbox Live Arcade games, or play online, or (I think) play a backwards compat game... so practically speaking, the updates are unavoidable if you're using Live. A lot of game disks come pre-loaded with updates that happen when you put the disk in the first time, as a way of keeping people offline updated as well.
But the problem with your statement is this: Once you've modded your Xbox, you've broken your warranty and Microsoft is under no obligation whatsoever to do fix anything for you. Period. That's the entire issue summed up in a single sentence.
Besides, even if MS wanted to, how could they QA software running on possibly-modded hardware? Once you've modded, if you're half-intelligent, you realize you're now outside MS's standard QA process and it's likely you'll have problems.
I agree entirely. I know it's against the Slashdot zeitgeist, where pirating music is ok, pirating commercial software is ok, etc... but if you've voided your warranty (and there's nothing mysterious about that, it's spelled out clearly in the paper that comes with the console), then you don't get support. Especially since the vast majority of people who mod Xboxes do so so they can pirate games.
The difference between iPod games and Xbox/PS3/Wii games is tremendous. The iPod can play games like a cell phone can play games-- the controls are all off, the games themselves are simplistic, and the graphics and sound are at MAYBE Super Nintendo levels. Making the leap from that to competing with even Nintendo (the least powerful console of this generation) is enormous.
I don't think iPod games indicate anything... you might as well say that since Bejeweled runs on Motorola phones that Motorola is going to make a video game console. Not likely.
Other than perhaps Library Science, what science is affected at all by the DMCA? What branch of science is affected by the Patriot Act?
Now the flame part:
It seems like you've just taken the standard set of Slashdot complaints about everything and translated it into this article on education/science without really thinking it through.
For instance, you have "stop trying to insert bias into science" which is a fine and noble goal... but here on Slashdot, any study that carries any funding even slightly related to the oil industry or Microsoft is instantly disregarded as a flawed survey, regardless of the actual methodology used and the reputation of the researcher. To the Slashdot point of view, the funding from those companies instantly introduced bias into the results.
Taken to the logical extreme, though, how the hell would ANY studies get funded? Any funding is invariably going to look like "bias" whether or not bias is involved at all. And is it really that alien a concept that Microsoft might WANT accurate research on why companies choose Windows Server 2003? Is it really that alien a concept that oil companies might be funding environmental research in order to better preserve the environment?
Now the snarky reply to the parent of this entire thread:
Japan seems to have a pretty good research track record, and they have about the most conformist society I've ever been exposed to. I think you're aiming at the wrong target. (Not to say people being unique is a bad idea, just saying it doesn't seem to affect research.)
If they're going to be trying to woo game developers, they're going to have to do something (and fast) to compete or be compatible with Microsoft's XNA development tools very very quickly. Using XNA/DirectX, developers can simultaneously develop a game for Windows Vista, XP and Xbox 360 with all the industry standard plug-ins (like Havok physics) and support for all the major rendering engines (like Unreal 3.0). That's hard to beat. Windows Vista might be disappointing, but I think everyone can agree that Microsoft Game Studios is kicking ass right now.
Considering Apple's best effort in this area in the past was "Game Sprockets" (the best parts of which were developed by Bungie anyway), and was quickly abandoned, I'm not holding my breath. Hell, does OS X even support joysticks? (Classic never really did worth crap, except mapping them like keyboards.)
And frankly, I'm sure this rumor is all a bunch of hot air. When a company is developing a game console, people know... simply the amount of game studios/tool developers/hardware designers/etc involved will make leaks impossible to avoid. (I mean, everyone knew pretty much everything about the Xbox a full year before its launch.)
So when blogs say, "please leave a comment," what they actually mean is, "please leave a comment and then hang around for the next few hours and participate in a conversation, then return to the site daily-- otherwise don't bother commenting at all or we will call you a jackass."
Look, if that's what the blog owner wants, they can have that. I guarantee that if I ever see that at the bottom of a blog post, I'll not comment. Sound fair?
I'm a "blog spamming jackass" because I leave comments on blogs? Could you explain this reasoning a little bit?
Most blogs invite people to leave comments... in fact, if they didn't want comments from "jackasses" like me, they would just turn off commenting in their blog software. Right?
But it's less likely that doing something to fight pollution is going to kill people than it is to let companies continue to pollute with no penalties.
Can you *prove* it?
That assertion is FAR from certain. Sure, it's the environmentalist mantra, but that doesn't make it true.
I was speaking in hypotheticals to demonstrate that it's not a completely black and white issue. The other point I was making is that we simply don't know what the end result of global warming is at this point.
I'm also sad that I have to actually explain this.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you 100%. Look at CSS alone.
CSS has multiple units of measurement, but it's impossible to do even simple math with them. For instance, I can't make a DIV 10em+10px wide. Why not?! Surely I can't be the only one on Earth who has thought of doing something so basic. Instead I have to enclose my DIV measuring in ems in another DIV measuring in pixels. Ridiculous. (And you can't pre-calculate the result because "em" varies based on font size.)
Vertical centering in CSS is ridiculously difficult. I'm sure I'll get a hundred web developers telling me that vertical centering is a bad idea, yada yada, but that's not the point: The point is that using Tables for layout (the very thing CSS is supposed to replace), vertical centering is ridiculously easy. How did something ridiculously easy become ridiculously hard? How is it the replacement technology (CSS) doesn't even do everything the technology it's replacing (table layouts) does?
I looked into CSS to update some old websites before basically just saying "screw it" and going back to good old Tables. Tables work all the time in every browser (almost), and are more powerful than CSS... the only downside is that they have to download a bit more data, but I'll take that tradeoff.
Wow you're cynical. Smile.
most of them are in it for the true advancement of technology.
More like ideology. If you're in it for the advancement of technology, no company on Earth can get your advancement more widespread than Microsoft right now. Not Apple, not Google, not IBM.
Come to think of it, if they're in it for the advancement of technology, why isn't Open Office more advanced than MS Office? Why isn't GIMP more advanced than Photoshop? The majority of open source projects are clones of commercial projects, only without the polish and features.
Of course, that meant that they couldn't turn and leverage new trends like modems and ftp and this newfangled http thing,
Ok, I keep seeing this claim that Microsoft was way behind the Internet curve... and I always wonder, "compared to WHAT?" MacOS at the time didn't even supply TCP/IP with the OS, you had to download a third-party control panel called MacTCP. God knows Linux hardly worked at all in that timeframe. Meanwhile, Windows 95 supported ethernet and modems all built-in and came with a browser.
In what way was Microsoft behind the Internet curve, and compared to whom? Let's stomp out this piece of FUD once and for all.
First of all, the worst (worst) movie ever is probably "Manos: The Hands of Fate". The worst (entertaining) movie is generally considered to be "Plan 9 from Outer Space." Gigli isn't even in the bottom 25.
Second of all, I thought The Day After Tomorrow wasn't that bad once you accepted the premise. (And really, the premise wasn't any harder to swallow than 'space empires fighting rebels a long time ago far away'.) The scene with the timber wolves in the frozen Russian cargo ship outside the New York Public Library was almost surreal, and I enjoyed it.
Based on articles like this one, the Liberal position seems to be: "Run around like crazy screaming at the top of your lungs that the sky is falling and flailing your arms."
This is compared to the Conservative position, which generally seems to be: "Whoa guys, calm down and think this through a little, huh?"
Given those choices, I'll take the Conservative position every time.
Based on how far behind it is on other Office features, I'd guess around 2012. OpenOffice is a fine piece of software, but an Office competitor it's not.
Of course, there are improvements and additional features, but nothing really really *really* major.
I call BS on that. Maybe for a home user, but I work in an office that *survives* on Office Live (or whatever they're calling it these days). And there isn't a single competitor to that right now, nobody else is even close.
ODF doesn't support all of Word's features (in a compatible way; of course if Microsoft extended the format to support all of Word's features, imagine the outcry!) It's very likely that ODF also doesn't support all of Keynote's features, and possible that it doesn't support all of Pages' features.
People on this board make it sound like not supporting ODF is the worst thing ever... in reality, a lot of products *can't* support ODF simply because the file format doesn't support the features they have.
Adobe Photoshop runs on Macintosh, and Adobe's website isn't the UGLIEST PRODUCT WEBSITE I've seen in the last 5 years. That might give them a slight edge.
(I love how, to add insult to injury, you fill your crappy website with screenshots of your crappy UI editing horrible ugly images. I'm sure I'm really impressed that your software can turn people into horribly mutated demons, but is that the best way to sell it? Photoshop Elements has a picture of a cute kid superimposed on a flower.)
Just a heads-up-- hire a decent website developer!
The only reason behind the $100 charge per year is the same reason they charge for approving drivers, or they charge for Xbox Live:
To keep the riff-raff out.
If you're paying $100 a year, you're likely a responsible enough adult that you'll not constantly submit Xbox Live Arcade games that completely suck, have no chance at being published, and waste a lot of Microsoft's time. (They charge for driver certification so they driver makers don't start using Microsoft as a free QA service. Similar concept. They charge for Xbox Live subscriptions so assholes don't make 30 of them to dodge bans.)
It's a valid practice. $100 a year is NOTHING to anybody actually interested in game development, the only one is hurts are little kids who would produce crap games anyway. (And even THEN, they can produce as many crap games on PC as they want; the $100 only applies if you want to run it on an Xbox.)
I like the insane leaps of logic required to make giving free dev tools away to the public look like a bad thing. While you're making up anti-Microsoft bullshit, remember that releasing stuff like this is what is going to give Microsoft a huge lead in console gaming and leave Sony in the dust.
My favorite one in OS X is how Software Update will cancel shutdown so it can show you a dialog saying it wants to shut down!!
Try this: Do a update that requires a reboot. When finished, Software Update will show a dialog that says you need to either reboot or shut down. Fine. So I switch to my applications with open documents, close them one by one, then when finished I go to the Apple menu and select "Restart." What do I get? Another dialog saying "Software Update has cancelled Restart!" Why did Software Update cancel it? Why, because it was too busy telling me to restart my computer to figure out that I WAS restarting the goddamned computer!
Remember back when Apple used to QA their products? Seems like a long time now...
She can look at her own back pocket? I haven't looked at that statue in awhile, but I don't remember it's neck being a GIANT SLINKY!
You can decline the updates, but Live will force them on you if you want to buy any media from it, or any Xbox Live Arcade games, or play online, or (I think) play a backwards compat game... so practically speaking, the updates are unavoidable if you're using Live. A lot of game disks come pre-loaded with updates that happen when you put the disk in the first time, as a way of keeping people offline updated as well.
But the problem with your statement is this: Once you've modded your Xbox, you've broken your warranty and Microsoft is under no obligation whatsoever to do fix anything for you. Period. That's the entire issue summed up in a single sentence.
Besides, even if MS wanted to, how could they QA software running on possibly-modded hardware? Once you've modded, if you're half-intelligent, you realize you're now outside MS's standard QA process and it's likely you'll have problems.
No intellectually honest person is saying Vista + new Office offer nothing new. The problem is that... well... you're reading this on Slashdot.
I agree entirely. I know it's against the Slashdot zeitgeist, where pirating music is ok, pirating commercial software is ok, etc... but if you've voided your warranty (and there's nothing mysterious about that, it's spelled out clearly in the paper that comes with the console), then you don't get support. Especially since the vast majority of people who mod Xboxes do so so they can pirate games.
The difference between iPod games and Xbox/PS3/Wii games is tremendous. The iPod can play games like a cell phone can play games-- the controls are all off, the games themselves are simplistic, and the graphics and sound are at MAYBE Super Nintendo levels. Making the leap from that to competing with even Nintendo (the least powerful console of this generation) is enormous.
I don't think iPod games indicate anything... you might as well say that since Bejeweled runs on Motorola phones that Motorola is going to make a video game console. Not likely.
Sheesh.
Serious question that might sound like a flame:
Other than perhaps Library Science, what science is affected at all by the DMCA? What branch of science is affected by the Patriot Act?
Now the flame part:
It seems like you've just taken the standard set of Slashdot complaints about everything and translated it into this article on education/science without really thinking it through.
For instance, you have "stop trying to insert bias into science" which is a fine and noble goal... but here on Slashdot, any study that carries any funding even slightly related to the oil industry or Microsoft is instantly disregarded as a flawed survey, regardless of the actual methodology used and the reputation of the researcher. To the Slashdot point of view, the funding from those companies instantly introduced bias into the results.
Taken to the logical extreme, though, how the hell would ANY studies get funded? Any funding is invariably going to look like "bias" whether or not bias is involved at all. And is it really that alien a concept that Microsoft might WANT accurate research on why companies choose Windows Server 2003? Is it really that alien a concept that oil companies might be funding environmental research in order to better preserve the environment?
Now the snarky reply to the parent of this entire thread:
Japan seems to have a pretty good research track record, and they have about the most conformist society I've ever been exposed to. I think you're aiming at the wrong target. (Not to say people being unique is a bad idea, just saying it doesn't seem to affect research.)
If they're going to be trying to woo game developers, they're going to have to do something (and fast) to compete or be compatible with Microsoft's XNA development tools very very quickly. Using XNA/DirectX, developers can simultaneously develop a game for Windows Vista, XP and Xbox 360 with all the industry standard plug-ins (like Havok physics) and support for all the major rendering engines (like Unreal 3.0). That's hard to beat. Windows Vista might be disappointing, but I think everyone can agree that Microsoft Game Studios is kicking ass right now.
Considering Apple's best effort in this area in the past was "Game Sprockets" (the best parts of which were developed by Bungie anyway), and was quickly abandoned, I'm not holding my breath. Hell, does OS X even support joysticks? (Classic never really did worth crap, except mapping them like keyboards.)
And frankly, I'm sure this rumor is all a bunch of hot air. When a company is developing a game console, people know... simply the amount of game studios/tool developers/hardware designers/etc involved will make leaks impossible to avoid. (I mean, everyone knew pretty much everything about the Xbox a full year before its launch.)
I see.
So when blogs say, "please leave a comment," what they actually mean is, "please leave a comment and then hang around for the next few hours and participate in a conversation, then return to the site daily-- otherwise don't bother commenting at all or we will call you a jackass."
Look, if that's what the blog owner wants, they can have that. I guarantee that if I ever see that at the bottom of a blog post, I'll not comment. Sound fair?
BTW, nice website.
I use Safari. But thanks for the tip anyway.
I'm a "blog spamming jackass" because I leave comments on blogs? Could you explain this reasoning a little bit?
Most blogs invite people to leave comments... in fact, if they didn't want comments from "jackasses" like me, they would just turn off commenting in their blog software. Right?
But it's less likely that doing something to fight pollution is going to kill people than it is to let companies continue to pollute with no penalties.
Can you *prove* it?
That assertion is FAR from certain. Sure, it's the environmentalist mantra, but that doesn't make it true.
I was speaking in hypotheticals to demonstrate that it's not a completely black and white issue. The other point I was making is that we simply don't know what the end result of global warming is at this point.
I'm also sad that I have to actually explain this.