For my wife's site, I can drop support for 800x600 since they comprise of less than 2% of my visitors
A growing number of users are on a device with a pivoting LCD that switches from 320x480 to 480x320.
The only thing that can't be changed is the crappy renderer, but that's a headache for the web designers, not for end users
Web designers pass the cost of working around IE's faults on to their clients, who in turn pass the cost on to the end users. So yes, it is a headache for the end users.
So did MS lie when they assured me that no personal information was collected when I installed WGA?
As I understand it, WGA includes a tool to submit an anonymous tip against your supplier. So it collects no personal information about you but instead about your supplier.
We live in a wonderful place called DSL-land
First you have to convince the phone company to put a hub within 2 miles of where you live. I know several people who live out of range. And then you might have to get voice service from the local phone monopoly, not Vonage or MagicJack or the cell phone company, because the local phone monopoly declines to sell naked DSL.
No cable service, just HSI. Don't miss it in the least and my monthly bill is $10 (Netflix) plus $29 for HSI
Where do you live? In Fort Wayne, Indiana, Comcast charges twice that much for high-speed Internet without phone or television. This $59.xx per month includes a $15/mo "line fee" that Comcast waives to all its TV subscribers, making local-channels-only "lifeline" TV essentially free.
Instead of the carrier being the jerk that slows/eliminates the ability to reach a content provider, the content provider is using your carrier as a reason to not serve you.
The Walt Disney Company has been doing this for years on ESPN360.
8,000 leechers, 4 seeders, your download will complete in 1 day, 17 hours, 49 minutes.
Until one of the seeders' BitTorrent clients detects a severe acute underseed and automatically turns on superseed mode for an hour. Would that help clear things up?
'We'll also be telling them how they can hook up their PCs to a television set.'
Does this mean that indie developers will finally have the tools to develop multiplayer video games that run on one PC, as opposed to a separate PC per player?
just a really long nose.
You've got to be lying.
I will NOT condemn a USB port just to communicate with some mouse's non-standard RF when my PC already has a usable means of communicating with my mouse.
Then get a hub. As I understand it, Bluetooth mice cost more because Bluetooth is patented with a nonzero royalty.
What does the government have to do with T9 keyboards?
The government granted a monopoly on T9 input to Tegic (now part of Nuance).
Erm, you do know how to scroll through the list of suggested words on your phone
But if you try to type BASES (22737) and have to scroll through ACRES of irrelevant words, you're not likely to be someone who CARES about T9, and using that mode isn't likely to be in the CARDS for you. How many keystrokes does it take to scroll through this list?
If you buy games (rather than pirate them) console gaming is no more expensive than maintaining a gaming PC
What about if I download games with the author's permission? I play games developed by amateurs in their spare time in addition to games developed by commercial businesses. On the PC, this is easy: download, unzip, run exe. But if I wanted to play games developed by amateurs during the early days of the GBA scene, I had to buy a $200 flash card for a $90 system. (Now GBA flash cards are down to $20, but that's beside the point.) The NES has the same problem: most NES games go for well under $10 used on online trading sites, but the "PowerPak" that runs homebrew games costs $135 and is often sold out.
That's a pretty poor example, seeing as SMB Frustration is a custom fan made level.
True, but it used elements from the game; hidden blocks n'such.
All that shows is that the game engine is capable of frustration. That's why Nintendo's level designers made the wise choice to use these potentially frustrating elements much more sparingly. I don't remember ever seeing anything but an out-of-the-way 1-up mushroom in any of the official invisible blocks of SMB1, but then I've never played all the way through SMB2 (J).
Not to start a flame war, but this is one of the reasons I prefer PC games. They typically allow for quicksave and/or a sane autosave.
That's fine for single player. But what do you do when you have friends over, and they don't have their own PCs to bring? Consoles have more titles that support single-monitor multiplayer.
unskippable cutscenes:
They're acceptable once, but not every time I want to replay the game. And ANNOYING AS HELL when they occur after before a big fight and must be replayed after dieing.
Some games, such as Super Mario Galaxy and We <3 Katamari, use tasteful, short, but unskippable cutscenes to cover loading. Would you rather have the screen be black?
button mashing:
Press a button as fast as you can to save your character.
What better control solution do you have for something like building up power ("Test Your Might" in Mortal Kombat) or resisting torture (scene with Revolver Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid) or quickly eating a fruit (several scenes in WarioWare Inc.: Mega Microgame$)?
Landmines:
Any situation relying on the player being telepathic to survive (it's an old example, but still a formla devs use)
Let me guess: You got frustrated at Minesweeper. Perhaps you could try playing Luminesweeper, which includes a cooperative buddy that automatically marks obvious mines.
Say "twenty-three-skiddoo" to logout.
