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Comment: Re:Just because of speed? (Score 1) 330

by AmIAnAi (#38439178) Attached to: Firefox 9 Released, JavaScript Performance Greatly Improved
It's not the rapid release cycle by itself that bothers me - if everything continued working I wouldn't care if there was a weekly update. As I said in my post it's the loss of usability that concerns me most - plugins not working, memory problems and the ever changing layout for no obvious benefit. Although I've only used Chrome intermittently since its first public betas it's UI feels far more stable and consistent than FF. And yes FF is becoming more Chrome-like, but not in a good way.

Comment: Re:Just because of speed? (Score 0, Troll) 330

by AmIAnAi (#38432584) Attached to: Firefox 9 Released, JavaScript Performance Greatly Improved
So true. I switched to Chrome at the weekend for exactly this reason. I can't remember when JS or render speed were an issue for me, but useability just keeps going down with FF.

Let's stop with the posts anouncing the latest release and wake me up when the Firefox devs are listening to their users once more.

Global Software Development Over Unreliable Networ

Submitted by AmIAnAi
AmIAnAi writes "We have two software teams on different continents developing separate products from a common code base. Currently each team has a their own copy of the source code and use CVS for change tracking. These repositories are infrequently synchronised by exchanging copies of the source.

We would like to use a common source repository but network latency and low bandwidth through the VPN makes it impractical to share a CVS repository.

What solutions have others devised for distributed development over unreliable networks. Paying for a premium connection with reduced latency is not an option and the source is owned by a third party, so security is paramount."

Comment: Re:This isn't a Mozilla problem... (Score 5, Insightful) 683

by AmIAnAi (#37098136) Attached to: Mozilla To Remove User-Facing Firefox Version Numbers
The problem is with Mozilla, and every other open source developer who thinks their way is best and to hell with the users and add-on developers. An established user base requires stability and consistency, not this months idea of what a web browser should look like. Sure, let users customize and tweak if they want to, but leave the underlying experience the same.

The Slashdot crowd may be vocal and anti the new Firefox, but the Mozilla developers need to sit up and take note. The vast majority of their current user base don't care enough to complain - they just switched to Chrome or IE. A significant number of friends and family who I converted to Firefox over the years have switched to Chrome in the past six months.

Comment: Re:Comments on the browser itself? (Score 1) 415

by AmIAnAi (#37093270) Attached to: Mozilla Firefox 6 Released Ahead of Schedule
Maybe I missed the big whooshing sound as your comment went over my head, but I suspect there wasn't one. If "everyone bitched" then the developers got it wrong. This isn't some obscure utility that is put out by a tiny dev team, this is a workhorse tool and people expect to be able to update and continue working as before - nothing broken, nothing missing and certainly no requirement to go reading through documentation to get back to where they were 5 minutes earlier. If the Firefox dev team were saying 'here's something we wrote for ourselves, use it if you like' then sure, they're free to make whatever changes they like, but when they start evangelising and actively courting users for their product they need to stop listening to their egos and listen to the end users.

Comment: Re:Perfect example of why wikipedia is not so bad (Score 1) 391

by AmIAnAi (#27859905) Attached to: Phony Wikipedia Entry Used By Worldwide Press

... demonstrates that wikipedia is pretty good at self-correcting itself !

It may be good at self-correcting, but most people don't re-visit the site to check if a particular fact is still true - or have the desire to check recent edits or follow editorial discussions on the article. If you cannot guarantee the validity of the material at any instant you visit the site, then it is essentialy worthless. That said, nothing can be 100% right, but you need to have confidence that what you are reading is, in all probability, correct. Otherwise you may as well save time and google the answer elsewhere.

Microsoft

A Real Bill Gates Rant 293

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the well-that's-not-so-bad dept.
lou ibmix XI submitted an email written by Bill Gates a few years ago and turned over to the feds as part of the government's antitrust case. Great quotes like 'Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?' and 'The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind.' We like to think of him as an abstract, but I think this is interesting stuff. Also, this might seem familiar. Oops.
Microsoft

Why Windows Must (and Will) Go Open Source 555

Posted by timothy
from the lacks-the-ring-of-inevitability dept.
Attila Dimedici writes "Charles Babcock of Information Week published an interesting article suggesting that Microsoft will have to at least to some degree take Windows open source if they want to stay in business. He suggests that the money to be made from the things MS builds on top of Windows (Office, Server, SQL Server, Exchange, Sharepoint, etc.) is so much greater than what can be made from Windows itself that MS will have to give up the revenue stream from Windows in order to maintain these other, more valuable, revenue streams."
Games

Simulating Emotions Within Games 47

Posted by Soulskill
from the dreams-of-electric-sheep dept.
Gamasutra is running an opinion piece about the way video games handle simulated emotions. Most often, an non-player character's emotional state is used to either tell a story or to drive gameplay. The author suggests that as both concepts become more complex in modern games, the simulation of emotions must also become more dynamic to remain interesting. Quoting: "Most of our emotional simulations use a simple sensation/calculation/behavior loop. Someone says or does something to a character; this influences his emotional state; he acts upon his feelings. His emotional state then reverts to a more neutral state over time (I was angry half an hour ago, but I've calmed down now), or changes again in response to another sensation. If these systems are really simple they produce absurd results: a character is furious one moment and cheerful a second later, like a Warner Brothers cartoon character. This is the kind of thing you get with finite state machines. This approach doesn't take into account the fact that behavior itself changes emotions. Behavior is not merely an output to be exhibited; it also affects how we feel. It feeds back into our emotional state."

"Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything." -- Russell Baker

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