Chrome stable (6.x) gave me 16165.4 on: Windows 7 x64 Phenom II X4 955 (3.2ghz) 6GB DDR2-800 (4-4-4-12)

Oh, and this is slashdot.org, not slashdot.eu - no one mentions how Symbian's doing across the pond because the discussion is about WINDOWS MOBILE.

My point was that there are many better alternatives to Windows Mobile that will remain more popular - I was not purporting to make a definitive list of the top smartphone operating systems.

I love you damn Europeans' abrasive attitude toward Americans - did I say I was talking about the whole world? Did I offend you somehow by not explicitly mentioning Nokia's OS? No need to be condescending about how many people you have in the European Union - I'm well aware that there are regions and countries of the world that are more populous than the US.

I'd say Office and Windows are still pretty damn relevant. However, in the mobile space - yeah, WinMo7 isn't going to change anything. iPhones and Android phones will still rule the smartphone market, and though BlackBerries are a dying breed in terms of the cutting-edge, even they will far exceed WinMo7's usage.

I'm glad someone else is with me on this point - I worked at Circuit City a few years ago right when 120Hz TVs were coming out, and it pissed me off to no end the salesperson and consumer frenzy over the frame-interpolation feature. Yeah, it looks nice and smooth for sports, but it looks like SHIT on movies, because they look EVEN WORSE than soap operas (which are usually filmed at 6 fps faster than film - imagine adding 36 or 96 extra fps!)

I still have clients in my business now that seek my counsel when buying HDTVs. People will ignore my explanation of this feature, and pay several hundred dollars more for a TV _solely_ for the 120 or 240Hz feature, when they don't even understand how it's probably going to make most of their viewing experiences worse (since they'll undoubtedly leave the thing on the High setting at all times).

Right, that's part of what's interesting about it - we do see a greater depth of field and a greater dynamic range with our eyes. But when you try to replicate those effects in film/video/games, it seems more fake - perhaps because we're used to seeing standard photography/videography as "real", and CG/games as having infinite depth of field and all shadows and highlights properly exposed.

That's true as far as photography/videography goes - but what I said about games is that it's the opposite - the "HDR" effect actually increases the dynamic range beyond that of your viewing medium so that it looks more like standard photography, rather than compressing the dynamic range so we can see it all.

That's exactly what I was getting at - the more dynamic range and perfect focus we see in the context of video, the more "fake" it tends to seem, despite the fact that it's more like what our eyes would perceive at the scene.

It's the other way around.

Even though we call it high dynamic range in videos and photographs, it's actually just compressing all the extra information from multiple exposures into a LOWER dynamic range, so we can manipulate/display it on our 8-bit screens.

Games, however - such as the Source engine after it got the HDR update with Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Day of Defeat: Source, actually do increase the dynamic range of a scene beyond what your monitor can display. They underexpose and overexpose parts of the scene when transitions between light and dark places occur, just as your eyes would before they adjusted to the new light, or as a video camera would depending on what exposure the videographer chose. This makes it look more realistic - just take a look at a bright outdoor scene in Half-Life 2: Episode Two and check out how shiny objects in the sunlight have blown-out highlights that gleam brilliantly, and then look at the same scene in the original Half-Life 2, where that object would look flatly-lit and fake. The "non-HDR" looks more fake because the dynamic range is compressed so you can see all the detail everywhere, which also gives it that flat "game" look.

Of course, that last part is just my opinion - but I believe that in order to look more realistic, CGI needs to simulate the behavior of traditional cameras with a lower dynamic range (or that of your eyes before they've adjusted properly to bright/dim light). The everything-is-exposed-properly, compressed-dynamic-range look just appears fake to me, even though my eyes could probably perceive that range at the actual scene. I'm not sure why.

I take that part back; upon seeing some tests from June, IE9 does compare favorably with Chrome/Safari/Opera. I was basing my comment on some older tests I'd seen of IE9, wherein they were nowhere near as fast as the Webkit browsers.

Besides, do you really blame me for assuming a release of IE is going to be shit? :-)

I use Windows, and if I was using Linux I sure as hell wouldn't be on something like Fluxbox just because Firefox can't have an efficient UI like Chrome and Opera.

The menu bar doesn't exist in Firefox 4 without pressing Alt - all there is, is the menu button at the top-left, in the titlebar. A titlebar isn't necessary and is a waste of space, because the title is on the current tab anyway. That's one logical reason to put the tabs where the title and a bunch of empty space would be.

Another is that it's faster/easier to select tabs if they're against the top of the screen (assuming a maximized window) - because it doesn't require precise Y-axis movement to within a 30-pixel-tall space to choose a tab, you just slam your mouse to the top and make sure the X-coordinate is within the 150px or so that the tab takes up.

I don't use any toolbars - I just like more viewing space. There's literally nothing on the top bar except the menu button and close/minimize buttons - why not use that space for tabs like Chrome? The title of the tab is the same title that'd be in the titlebar anyway, so you don't really need a titlebar. And yeah, on netbooks, Firefox can be really annoying on some sites.

The main thing, however, is not even the screen space - it's the fact that it's even FASTER (despite your mouse traveling a smidge further) to have the tabs at the very top. This is because it doesn't require precise Y-axis movement to within a 30-pixel-tall space to choose a tab, you just slam your mouse to the top and make sure the X-coordinate is within the 150px or so that the tab takes up.

It's not about the mouse distance traveled - it in fact takes LESS time to pick tabs that are on top because you can slam your mouse to the top of the screen - you don't need to spend the extra time precisely choosing your Y coordinate, only the X. Same reason it's nice that in Windows, the close button (even though it doesn't physically touch it) can still be hit by slamming your mouse into the upper right of the screen. It's basically a gesture at that point, not a precise move and then click.

Seems like they're shooting pretty low by trying to match IE9's performance. Chrome, Safari, and Opera are all still kicking ass in the JavaScript speed space - come on Firefox, I want to go back to you but you still waste an entire bar of vertical screen space on the titlebar (MOVE THE TABS UP THERE) and JS performance is still going to be subpar?

Looking at these new screenshots, they STILL have fucking grammar issues. If I'm going to fall for something, it's not going to be an error page with spelling errors and unnecessary exclamation points. How hard would it be for these fuckers to find a native English speaker to proofread their shit for them? Jeez.