A competitor of Amazon's, woot.com, runs a promotion like this every single day for some overstocked items, selling them at sometimes ridiculous prices. They also go down almost every single day, from my experience, in the same way Amazon.com did. I think you reach a certain point of traffic spike, and it's just not possible to compensate it. The Slashdot Effect is nothing compared to the "I want cheap shit" effect... look at Wal-Mart, for instance.
Same way every DVR in the universe has been doing it for the last 5 years. It records into a memory buffer only large enough to hold a few minutes worth of audio, then if something noteworthy happens it can flush that buffer to disk. Otherwise, it just begins recording over the old audio data.
Saying "it saves the 30-60 seconds before the aggressive tone" doesn't imply, "it saves everything."
You know, if some company in Europe had developed a OS of their own at the same time (or before) Apple, Microsoft, and IBM were completely owning the process, Microsoft wouldn't have nearly as strong a hold as it does now. The reason "it's all about us Americans" is because Europe was snoozing when it should have been developing software, computers, networks, etc.
Oh, STALLMAN says not to use the term! You've convinced me!!
I was going to say "thank you" but the raving nutjob with the grocery bag full of discarded candy bar wrappers told me not to, and I respect his opinion a lot more than Stallman's.
But they still play the game and pretend they're legitimate, because they somehow think they'll benefit, in the end, using them to crush current and potential competition with multi-million legal actions and the threat thereof.
No. Microsoft only holds patents to counter lawsuits from companies like Eolas. (Or whatever their name was.) It is not Microsoft's policy to aggressively sue other companies for patent infringements, and Microsoft actively campaigns for patent reform whenever they have a chance.
Of course, nobody will bother to believe the truth on this site because Microsoft is "evil."
Socialising on company time is just another form of skiving. If you're on a flexible time contract, those hours just don't count towards your working week; otherwise, save it until after work. Either way it's irrelevant.
I have a serious question for you. It might look like a joke, but I'd like an honest answer.
Yes, but that has nothing to do with cubicles! That has to do with rude co-workers. Believe me, they could be equally rude in an office environment.
I think most people who complain about cubicles are actually complaining about rude co-workers. Personally, I like cubicles, but that's because I work with polite people.
I prefer the cubicle too, given that eople nearby are polite. By this I mean they're not screaming into phones, they use headphones with music, they don't just shout stuff out randomly all the time. (From my experience, people in open plan offices are almost always very quiet and polite.) And really, people being assholes is pretty much the only complaint the "everyone needs an office" crowd is really arguing about.
The main advantage to me is that it helps me stay focused on my work. If I don't have the possibility of people looking at my screen, I tend to waste time on web surfing or other non-work activities.
Re:1996 called. It wants its article back.
on
When Beige Won't Do
·
· Score: 1
The funny thing is that Apple basically invented the Beige thing in the first place, although not really on purpose... they just happened to use beige plastic (for whatever reason) and big the biggest computer seller very early on in the industry.
The standard "could you spend at least 3 words explaining WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!" complaint applies for this summary also.
(For others like me, OLPC is the "One Laptop Per Child" project, apparently, making those wind-up laptops to sell for cheap. You've probably heard about it, just under a different name or no name at all other than "cheap wind-up laptops.")
1) Yes, Amazon needs to "wootify" their servers. (Actually Woot.com goes down every day also...) I also missed out on the $100 Xbox deal, but it's no biggie since I already have one. (Was trying for a friend of mine.)
2) The fact that Microsoft's servers are literally OVERLOADED with people trying to use a gaming console for video shows that there seem to be a good many people wanting to do that. I mean, I know the whole "everybody thinks exactly like me!" disease is rampant here on Slashdot, but when the *article itself* shows that you're wrong, you'd think you'd hold-off posting it.
In Washington State, Verizon offers 3Mbps DSL for $25/month. That's cheap, dirt cheap. If you're getting less than 3Mbps for more than $25/month, you're being totally ripped off.
What we get out of it is: * Eats grass as an Ox does * Moves his tail like a cedar [moves] (This doesn't imply size, BTW. My kitty-cat moves his tail like a lion; does that mean he's as large as a lion?) * His bones are like brass or iron * His food comes forth from the mountains. (Even though he eats grass? Already confusing. Does grass migrate? Maybe an omnivore?) * He lies under shady trees * He drinks from a river.
I don't see anything in this passage that screams "dinosaur" to me. Nothing even that suggests this creature is exceptionally large. (Given, some dinosaurs could be small, but if you think the cedar line refers to the size of a cedar, then you've narrowed it down to just dinosaurs.) The "bones like iron" line is obviously dramatic license.
Now if I were a biology expert, and I knew where in the world this passage was written, I'm sure I could find a real-life animal that fits this description much better than a dinosaur. I'm not a biology expert, so I'm not going to try.
Evil: If I were creating the world I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, Day One! [zaps one of his minions accidentally, minion screams] Evil: Sorry.
Re:So... it realy sucks, but its the best 360 game
on
Gears of War Review
·
· Score: 1
Nice attempt to twist a single bad review into some kind of confirmation that Microsoft sucks. How Slashdot-ish of you.
To answer your question, no it doesn't mean Xbox 360 has few good games, it means Zonk is a terrible reviewer. You'll see a lot more evidence of that once he begins reviewing Nintendo Wiiiiii games, since this site is approximately 90% Nintendo fans.
I'm not one of those "Apple is holy and can do no wrong" people. Believe me, I criticize Apple as much as I do anybody else. And yes, Mac OS' quality has dropped off a LOT since the acquisition of NeXT.
(Look at Finder alone-- it used to be the model of how to build a file browser, now it's a piece of crap that can't even cope with making image previews or connecting to network drives. Thanks, Apple, I love it when my iBook freezes because I had the gall to close the lid while it was connected to a network drive then open it up in a place where that network isn't available. I heard of this new technology called "error detection," you should try it.)
I disagree with Java in general because I think it's completely misguided. But look what happened when Microsoft started adding to Java to get it to create more correct Win32 programs: people began to bitch and moan that MS was "ruining" Java and fragmenting the Java developer community by making proprietary extensions to it. Apple would run the same risk if they added anything to the Java VM to allow it to make use of all those Macintosh-specific features.
But a bigger issue is this: Even if Apple did add all of those features to the Java VM, no Java developer would ever use them. Two big Java projects that get a lot of press are Limewire and Azureus. Both of them have horrible UIs on all platforms they run on. They could make use of simple UI improvements, even with the lowest-common-dominator approach Java VM takes, and yet they don't.
IMO, Java VM is beyond hope when talking about UI quality. (Obviously Java the programming language is fine. It's just the VM environment I take issue with.) I won't tell you to use Cocoa, but I will say that by choosing Java VM, you knew that you'd be making a crappy UI in every OS it runs in, because there's simply no technical way around that.
And seriously, Slashcode coders, how hard is it to write a regex to determine that "Less Than GUI Front-end Name Greater Than" isn't a HTML tag? Criminy.
(Typing this without re-downloading the app, and my memory ain't perfect.)
For those just joining us, we're talking about this Read Me file:
nf FAQ for Mac:
Q. I set NSRT location to "Frontend Directory", but where is it? A. nf.app/Contents/MacOS. Put nsrt into this folder.
Q. I set Start location to "Frontend Directory", but it doesn't work. A. Qt rejects to show the contents of the nf.app when starting. Use other locations instead.
Q. Where is the preference file? A. In nf.app/Contents/MacOS.
Q. Where should I put the lang folder? A. In the same place as nf.app.
Q. What is the blank rectangle above "HTML" radio button? A. Qt's bug.
All executable files are made as "universal binary".
File type detection is supported as '-noext' option on all NSRT platforms. So, if your ROM image is compressed without extension, don't forget to add -noext option.
- zones
Telling users to insert files into the Application Bundle is a huge no-no. QT "rejects" (rejects?) to show the contents of an Application Bundle because, like all *good* software, Application Bundles are treated as single files (and QT's coders apparently know more about the Mac than whoever made this front-end.) A user should never have to know that they are in fact folders.
That's kind of all beside the point though, since a non-admin user can't insert files into Application Bundles that way anyway-- so there's a huge, obvious bug right away. And since the Preferences FIle is inside the Application Bundle, presumably it either won't even work when run as non-admin, or will fail to save preferences.
Preferences inside an Application Bundle = another HUGE WTF. Surely QT contains a function to return the proper path to store preference files in? If not, it's ~/Library/Preferences in OS X and $HOME/Application Support/ in Windows IIRC. Or Local Settings/Application Support if it shouldn't be replicated by Roaming Profiles, like a web browser cache. (Firefox, BTW, got this wrong in version 1. Not sure if it's fixed yet. The browser cache should go into Local Settings so it doesn't get transferred over the network 20 times a day.)
The blank square above the HTML radio button is a bug regardless of what GUI libraries you used. Fix it. The user doesn't give a crap about your excuses or finger-pointing, they just want a quality application. Hell, the user doesn't even know or care what QT is, nor *should* they.
That all said, the Read Me also doesn't explain what the application even does. Or at least is supposed to do. I have no clue. If I recall from yesterday, there's also no associated help that gives this information either.
Mac OS X doesn't have a concept of directories?
No, it has the concept of "folders." The user should never see the word "directory" (not used in that way, at least), they should see "folder." And the user should not be expected to know what the term "parent" in regards to the folder structure means. The word "directory" is from Linux. I'm pretty sure Windows doesn't use the word "directory" either in the GUI (but I could be wrong.)
That part was made by a Windows user.
What do I win for guessing it wasn't made by a Mac user!? I want a year's supply of Brawny paper towels!
There's one About for the application, and another about the application it's a frontend for. Although it doesn't do much more than serve as credits.... except that both "Abouts" go to the exact same screen. Or maybe there's a very subtle difference I didn't notice. But in either case, both Abouts should be in the Application menu, as "About ", then under it, "About ". Putting the version number and credits in About is fine, along with any copyright notice you may have. I mean, Safari's About just says "Safari, Version 2.0.4, Copyright 2005 Apple Computer."
Well thanks, that's one part I actually wrote myself. But what did you actually find good about it? Just the e
Q. I set NSRT location to "Frontend Directory", but where is it? A. nf.app/Contents/MacOS. Put nsrt into this folder.
Q. I set Start location to "Frontend Directory", but it doesn't work. A. Qt rejects to show the contents of the nf.app when starting. Use other locations instead.
Q. Where is the preference file? A. In nf.app/Contents/MacOS.
Q. Where should I put the lang folder? A. In the same place as nf.app.
Q. What is the blank rectangle above "HTML" radio button? A. Qt's bug.
All executable files are made as "universal binary".
File type detection is supported as '-noext' option on all NSRT platforms. So, if your ROM image is compressed without extension, don't forget to add -noext option.
- zones
You're telling me that THIS was QAed?
Let's look at a screenshot of the first thing the user sees:
This is the best you can do cross-platform? "[Parent Directory]" on MAC OS X?! Whoever made this GUI obviously is not a Mac user, and there's no way this could possibly pass as a Mac OS-native application. Hell, "About" is in the Help menu! (Oh wait, About is both in Help and in the Application menu. Even worse.) The Preferences dialog is actually pretty good.
I'm not going to waste my friday doing a detailed review of some ported app which, frankly, I don't even really know what it does. But you haven't changed my mind whatsoever. Even the most basic QA process would have fixed that ugly blank rectangle which is basically the very first thing the user sees.
Caveat: If your app is command-line, then this isn't really an issue. (Well, it still sort-of is, in that DOS CLI apps have different mechanisms for help than Unix ones, but we'll ignore those details.)
The reason cross-platform is hard is because GUIs behave very differently from each other. To be a "correct" Mac OS program, you must support:
1) AppleScript, at least the bare minimum actions.
2) The Services menu. Many ported apps don't have it.
3) The integrated spell checker. Most ported apps don't have it. Including biggies like Microsoft Office. (Needless-to-say, Firefox also doesn't support the integrated spell checker.)
4) Verb dialog boxes. That is, no "yes/no" questions in dialogs, they must all be "Save" "Don't Save" (or similar.) In addition, the location of Ok and Cancel are different in different OSes.
5) Drag&Drop, another simple feature the majority of ported apps get wrong. (Note: this includes drag&drop text editing as well as dragging snippets to the desktop.)
6) Mac-like edit boxes. Here's an example ported apps almost always get wrong: if your cursor is at the bottom line, but in the middle of the text, and you hit the down arrow the cursor should move to the end of the bottom line. On Windows, it should do nothing. On Linux... well I have no clue if Linux has any standards for arrow behavior in edit boxes. (Firefox gets this wrong also, as do many, many apps.)
7) Standard Mac menu shortcuts. This is pretty easy since other OSes ripped-off most of Apple's shortcuts anyway.
8) Being responsive to sleep, hibernate and shut down requests from the OS. Every time I see OS X telling me that shutdown was cancelled because of some mis-behaving app I want to scream.
9) Not relying on any absolute paths other than those defined by the OS. Lot of apps get this wrong.
10) Using Apple's color picker, font picker, "Special Characters" picker, etc instead of your own. Many apps get this wrong.
I'm probably missing items on this list. In addition, Windows has items on its list different from the Macintosh list. (For instance, coping with Active Directory, having an installer.)
I can guarantee that your cross-platform framework gets at most half of these things right. The Java VM gets basically none of them right. Firefox gets like 3 of them right. The reason you think cross-platform development is easy is one or more of the following:
1) You don't bother to QA your product on Mac/Windows/whatever. (This is the most likely.)
2) Your programs have trivial GUIs and/or you don't give a whit about the quality of the GUI.
3) Your programs are CLIs and have no GUI at all. (Note that if this is the case, they're still probably wrong on DOS, which is quite different from Unix CLIs.)
Tell you what, the instant I see a single ported app to Mac OS X that actually looks and behaves like an OS X app, I'll eat my words and agree with you. But I don't think that'll happen.
Not to diminish your post, but from my understanding Visicalc is one of the applications Microsoft uses as a baseline for backwards-compatibility testing. The fact that it still runs in 2006 is more a testament to the efforts of OS designers than the original program-- the original program only had to follow all the published specs of the time.
How many times have you seen the sig "There's no place like 127.0.0.0?" here on Slashdot? It might be lame, but it's not like Microsoft is the only one who's used that tired gag.
Slashdot Mirror
A competitor of Amazon's, woot.com, runs a promotion like this every single day for some overstocked items, selling them at sometimes ridiculous prices. They also go down almost every single day, from my experience, in the same way Amazon.com did. I think you reach a certain point of traffic spike, and it's just not possible to compensate it. The Slashdot Effect is nothing compared to the "I want cheap shit" effect... look at Wal-Mart, for instance.
Same way every DVR in the universe has been doing it for the last 5 years. It records into a memory buffer only large enough to hold a few minutes worth of audio, then if something noteworthy happens it can flush that buffer to disk. Otherwise, it just begins recording over the old audio data.
Saying "it saves the 30-60 seconds before the aggressive tone" doesn't imply, "it saves everything."
You know, if some company in Europe had developed a OS of their own at the same time (or before) Apple, Microsoft, and IBM were completely owning the process, Microsoft wouldn't have nearly as strong a hold as it does now. The reason "it's all about us Americans" is because Europe was snoozing when it should have been developing software, computers, networks, etc.
Oh, STALLMAN says not to use the term! You've convinced me!!
I was going to say "thank you" but the raving nutjob with the grocery bag full of discarded candy bar wrappers told me not to, and I respect his opinion a lot more than Stallman's.
But they still play the game and pretend they're legitimate, because they somehow think they'll benefit, in the end, using them to crush current and potential competition with multi-million legal actions and the threat thereof.
No. Microsoft only holds patents to counter lawsuits from companies like Eolas. (Or whatever their name was.) It is not Microsoft's policy to aggressively sue other companies for patent infringements, and Microsoft actively campaigns for patent reform whenever they have a chance.
Of course, nobody will bother to believe the truth on this site because Microsoft is "evil."
You think Slashdot is an accurate representation of the average American?
God help us!
Socialising on company time is just another form of skiving. If you're on a flexible time contract, those hours just don't count towards your working week; otherwise, save it until after work. Either way it's irrelevant.
I have a serious question for you. It might look like a joke, but I'd like an honest answer.
Are you a robot?
Because that would be pretty cool if you were.
Yes, but that has nothing to do with cubicles! That has to do with rude co-workers. Believe me, they could be equally rude in an office environment.
I think most people who complain about cubicles are actually complaining about rude co-workers. Personally, I like cubicles, but that's because I work with polite people.
I prefer the cubicle too, given that eople nearby are polite. By this I mean they're not screaming into phones, they use headphones with music, they don't just shout stuff out randomly all the time. (From my experience, people in open plan offices are almost always very quiet and polite.) And really, people being assholes is pretty much the only complaint the "everyone needs an office" crowd is really arguing about.
The main advantage to me is that it helps me stay focused on my work. If I don't have the possibility of people looking at my screen, I tend to waste time on web surfing or other non-work activities.
The funny thing is that Apple basically invented the Beige thing in the first place, although not really on purpose... they just happened to use beige plastic (for whatever reason) and big the biggest computer seller very early on in the industry.
How about "what the hell is OLPC?"
The standard "could you spend at least 3 words explaining WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!" complaint applies for this summary also.
(For others like me, OLPC is the "One Laptop Per Child" project, apparently, making those wind-up laptops to sell for cheap. You've probably heard about it, just under a different name or no name at all other than "cheap wind-up laptops.")
1) Yes, Amazon needs to "wootify" their servers. (Actually Woot.com goes down every day also...) I also missed out on the $100 Xbox deal, but it's no biggie since I already have one. (Was trying for a friend of mine.)
2) The fact that Microsoft's servers are literally OVERLOADED with people trying to use a gaming console for video shows that there seem to be a good many people wanting to do that. I mean, I know the whole "everybody thinks exactly like me!" disease is rampant here on Slashdot, but when the *article itself* shows that you're wrong, you'd think you'd hold-off posting it.
In Washington State, Verizon offers 3Mbps DSL for $25/month. That's cheap, dirt cheap. If you're getting less than 3Mbps for more than $25/month, you're being totally ripped off.
Well, there are rumors that Microsoft will be releasing a larger HD soon. Either 60 or 80 GB, I believe.
On another note, do you seriously believe that a "restocking fee" is any different than a late fee? If so, why?
That passage doesn't even imply its size.
What we get out of it is:
* Eats grass as an Ox does
* Moves his tail like a cedar [moves] (This doesn't imply size, BTW. My kitty-cat moves his tail like a lion; does that mean he's as large as a lion?)
* His bones are like brass or iron
* His food comes forth from the mountains. (Even though he eats grass? Already confusing. Does grass migrate? Maybe an omnivore?)
* He lies under shady trees
* He drinks from a river.
I don't see anything in this passage that screams "dinosaur" to me. Nothing even that suggests this creature is exceptionally large. (Given, some dinosaurs could be small, but if you think the cedar line refers to the size of a cedar, then you've narrowed it down to just dinosaurs.) The "bones like iron" line is obviously dramatic license.
Now if I were a biology expert, and I knew where in the world this passage was written, I'm sure I could find a real-life animal that fits this description much better than a dinosaur. I'm not a biology expert, so I'm not going to try.
(Time Bandits)
Evil: If I were creating the world I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, Day One!
[zaps one of his minions accidentally, minion screams]
Evil: Sorry.
Nice attempt to twist a single bad review into some kind of confirmation that Microsoft sucks. How Slashdot-ish of you.
To answer your question, no it doesn't mean Xbox 360 has few good games, it means Zonk is a terrible reviewer. You'll see a lot more evidence of that once he begins reviewing Nintendo Wiiiiii games, since this site is approximately 90% Nintendo fans.
Dude, relax. Are you new at this whole "Internet" thing? Here's a tip: develop a thick skin or you'll have an aneurysm inside of 5 months.
I'm not one of those "Apple is holy and can do no wrong" people. Believe me, I criticize Apple as much as I do anybody else. And yes, Mac OS' quality has dropped off a LOT since the acquisition of NeXT.
(Look at Finder alone-- it used to be the model of how to build a file browser, now it's a piece of crap that can't even cope with making image previews or connecting to network drives. Thanks, Apple, I love it when my iBook freezes because I had the gall to close the lid while it was connected to a network drive then open it up in a place where that network isn't available. I heard of this new technology called "error detection," you should try it.)
I disagree with Java in general because I think it's completely misguided. But look what happened when Microsoft started adding to Java to get it to create more correct Win32 programs: people began to bitch and moan that MS was "ruining" Java and fragmenting the Java developer community by making proprietary extensions to it. Apple would run the same risk if they added anything to the Java VM to allow it to make use of all those Macintosh-specific features.
But a bigger issue is this: Even if Apple did add all of those features to the Java VM, no Java developer would ever use them. Two big Java projects that get a lot of press are Limewire and Azureus. Both of them have horrible UIs on all platforms they run on. They could make use of simple UI improvements, even with the lowest-common-dominator approach Java VM takes, and yet they don't.
IMO, Java VM is beyond hope when talking about UI quality. (Obviously Java the programming language is fine. It's just the VM environment I take issue with.) I won't tell you to use Cocoa, but I will say that by choosing Java VM, you knew that you'd be making a crappy UI in every OS it runs in, because there's simply no technical way around that.
Stupid Slashcode swallowed some of my text.
The path for preferences in Windows should be:
$HOME/Application Support/|Application Name|
The two Abouts should be:
About |GUI Front-end Name|
And
About |CLI Tool Name|
And seriously, Slashcode coders, how hard is it to write a regex to determine that "Less Than GUI Front-end Name Greater Than" isn't a HTML tag? Criminy.
(Typing this without re-downloading the app, and my memory ain't perfect.)
... except that both "Abouts" go to the exact same screen. Or maybe there's a very subtle difference I didn't notice. But in either case, both Abouts should be in the Application menu, as "About ", then under it, "About ". Putting the version number and credits in About is fine, along with any copyright notice you may have. I mean, Safari's About just says "Safari, Version 2.0.4, Copyright 2005 Apple Computer."
For those just joining us, we're talking about this Read Me file:
nf FAQ for Mac:
Q. I set NSRT location to "Frontend Directory", but where is it?
A. nf.app/Contents/MacOS. Put nsrt into this folder.
Q. I set Start location to "Frontend Directory", but it doesn't work.
A. Qt rejects to show the contents of the nf.app when starting. Use other locations instead.
Q. Where is the preference file?
A. In nf.app/Contents/MacOS.
Q. Where should I put the lang folder?
A. In the same place as nf.app.
Q. What is the blank rectangle above "HTML" radio button?
A. Qt's bug.
All executable files are made as "universal binary".
File type detection is supported as '-noext' option on all NSRT platforms.
So, if your ROM image is compressed without extension, don't forget to add -noext option.
- zones
Telling users to insert files into the Application Bundle is a huge no-no. QT "rejects" (rejects?) to show the contents of an Application Bundle because, like all *good* software, Application Bundles are treated as single files (and QT's coders apparently know more about the Mac than whoever made this front-end.) A user should never have to know that they are in fact folders.
That's kind of all beside the point though, since a non-admin user can't insert files into Application Bundles that way anyway-- so there's a huge, obvious bug right away. And since the Preferences FIle is inside the Application Bundle, presumably it either won't even work when run as non-admin, or will fail to save preferences.
Preferences inside an Application Bundle = another HUGE WTF. Surely QT contains a function to return the proper path to store preference files in? If not, it's ~/Library/Preferences in OS X and $HOME/Application Support/ in Windows IIRC. Or Local Settings/Application Support if it shouldn't be replicated by Roaming Profiles, like a web browser cache. (Firefox, BTW, got this wrong in version 1. Not sure if it's fixed yet. The browser cache should go into Local Settings so it doesn't get transferred over the network 20 times a day.)
The blank square above the HTML radio button is a bug regardless of what GUI libraries you used. Fix it. The user doesn't give a crap about your excuses or finger-pointing, they just want a quality application. Hell, the user doesn't even know or care what QT is, nor *should* they.
That all said, the Read Me also doesn't explain what the application even does. Or at least is supposed to do. I have no clue. If I recall from yesterday, there's also no associated help that gives this information either.
Mac OS X doesn't have a concept of directories?
No, it has the concept of "folders." The user should never see the word "directory" (not used in that way, at least), they should see "folder." And the user should not be expected to know what the term "parent" in regards to the folder structure means. The word "directory" is from Linux. I'm pretty sure Windows doesn't use the word "directory" either in the GUI (but I could be wrong.)
That part was made by a Windows user.
What do I win for guessing it wasn't made by a Mac user!? I want a year's supply of Brawny paper towels!
There's one About for the application, and another about the application it's a frontend for. Although it doesn't do much more than serve as credits.
Well thanks, that's one part I actually wrote myself. But what did you actually find good about it? Just the e
From the Read Me attached to that download:
nf FAQ for Mac:
Q. I set NSRT location to "Frontend Directory", but where is it?
A. nf.app/Contents/MacOS. Put nsrt into this folder.
Q. I set Start location to "Frontend Directory", but it doesn't work.
A. Qt rejects to show the contents of the nf.app when starting. Use other locations instead.
Q. Where is the preference file?
A. In nf.app/Contents/MacOS.
Q. Where should I put the lang folder?
A. In the same place as nf.app.
Q. What is the blank rectangle above "HTML" radio button?
A. Qt's bug.
All executable files are made as "universal binary".
File type detection is supported as '-noext' option on all NSRT platforms.
So, if your ROM image is compressed without extension, don't forget to add -noext option.
- zones
You're telling me that THIS was QAed?
Let's look at a screenshot of the first thing the user sees:
http://schend.net/images/screenshots/nsrt33.png
This is the best you can do cross-platform? "[Parent Directory]" on MAC OS X?! Whoever made this GUI obviously is not a Mac user, and there's no way this could possibly pass as a Mac OS-native application. Hell, "About" is in the Help menu! (Oh wait, About is both in Help and in the Application menu. Even worse.) The Preferences dialog is actually pretty good.
I'm not going to waste my friday doing a detailed review of some ported app which, frankly, I don't even really know what it does. But you haven't changed my mind whatsoever. Even the most basic QA process would have fixed that ugly blank rectangle which is basically the very first thing the user sees.
Caveat: If your app is command-line, then this isn't really an issue. (Well, it still sort-of is, in that DOS CLI apps have different mechanisms for help than Unix ones, but we'll ignore those details.)
The reason cross-platform is hard is because GUIs behave very differently from each other. To be a "correct" Mac OS program, you must support:
1) AppleScript, at least the bare minimum actions.
2) The Services menu. Many ported apps don't have it.
3) The integrated spell checker. Most ported apps don't have it. Including biggies like Microsoft Office. (Needless-to-say, Firefox also doesn't support the integrated spell checker.)
4) Verb dialog boxes. That is, no "yes/no" questions in dialogs, they must all be "Save" "Don't Save" (or similar.) In addition, the location of Ok and Cancel are different in different OSes.
5) Drag&Drop, another simple feature the majority of ported apps get wrong. (Note: this includes drag&drop text editing as well as dragging snippets to the desktop.)
6) Mac-like edit boxes. Here's an example ported apps almost always get wrong: if your cursor is at the bottom line, but in the middle of the text, and you hit the down arrow the cursor should move to the end of the bottom line. On Windows, it should do nothing. On Linux... well I have no clue if Linux has any standards for arrow behavior in edit boxes. (Firefox gets this wrong also, as do many, many apps.)
7) Standard Mac menu shortcuts. This is pretty easy since other OSes ripped-off most of Apple's shortcuts anyway.
8) Being responsive to sleep, hibernate and shut down requests from the OS. Every time I see OS X telling me that shutdown was cancelled because of some mis-behaving app I want to scream.
9) Not relying on any absolute paths other than those defined by the OS. Lot of apps get this wrong.
10) Using Apple's color picker, font picker, "Special Characters" picker, etc instead of your own. Many apps get this wrong.
I'm probably missing items on this list. In addition, Windows has items on its list different from the Macintosh list. (For instance, coping with Active Directory, having an installer.)
I can guarantee that your cross-platform framework gets at most half of these things right. The Java VM gets basically none of them right. Firefox gets like 3 of them right. The reason you think cross-platform development is easy is one or more of the following:
1) You don't bother to QA your product on Mac/Windows/whatever. (This is the most likely.)
2) Your programs have trivial GUIs and/or you don't give a whit about the quality of the GUI.
3) Your programs are CLIs and have no GUI at all. (Note that if this is the case, they're still probably wrong on DOS, which is quite different from Unix CLIs.)
Tell you what, the instant I see a single ported app to Mac OS X that actually looks and behaves like an OS X app, I'll eat my words and agree with you. But I don't think that'll happen.
Not to diminish your post, but from my understanding Visicalc is one of the applications Microsoft uses as a baseline for backwards-compatibility testing. The fact that it still runs in 2006 is more a testament to the efforts of OS designers than the original program-- the original program only had to follow all the published specs of the time.
How many times have you seen the sig "There's no place like 127.0.0.0?" here on Slashdot? It might be lame, but it's not like Microsoft is the only one who's used that tired gag.