in my experienceHas Nokia made 'pay to play' even less attractive?
August 20, 2003 11:31 AM
I'm not sure if there's some journalistic sloppiness here, or if Nokia is plain stupid, or out rightly greedy. But consider the following...
- The Nokia N-Gage will have Bluetooth local networking connectivity.
- C|Net sates that "Wireless gaming is expected to generate $8 billion a year by 2007, according to figures provided by Sega."
- C|Net also states that "N-Gage gamers will use minutes from their calling plans to play."
Bluetooth operates in the 2.4 ghz spectrum (along with cordless telephones, 802.11b and 802.11g networking gear, and baby monitors) and does not use the cellular/pcs/gsm networks, therefore, charging customers their calling plan minutes is pure and utter bullshit. I hope C|Net is has its facts mixed up.
We've come a long way, dorfie.
August 18, 2003 4:12 AM
Back in the day, Hex editing Myth game files was all the rage (for Myth nerds anyway). Do you want a dorf (dorf == Dwarf) who throws arrows instead of molotov cocktails? No problem, hex edit that bad boy and do whatever you want. These days, the l33t thing is to hack Halo.
Some weekend reading.
August 14, 2003 10:47 AM
Cool URIs don't change
What makes a cool URI?Dispute exposes bitter power struggle behind Web logs
A cool URI is one which does not change.
What sorts of URI change?
URIs don't change: people change them.
Winer's opponents are seeking a new format that would clarify RSS ambiguities, consolidate its multiple versions, expand its capabilities, and fall under the auspices of a traditional standards organization. Calls to revise RSS itself fell on deaf ears when Winer decided to freeze its technological core, preventing substantial changes to the heart of the format.Next Jordan Could Be a Gamer
The video-game industry has outpaced Hollywood (PDF) in terms of revenues over the last few years, yet gaming has remained part of the pop culture gutter. However, big money and media exposure is helping change that. Top tournaments now offer as much as $200,000 in purses and draw thousands of international players.Karma Vertigo: or Considering The Excessive Responsibilities Placed On Us By The Dawn Of The Information Infrastructure
I've been observing the progress of debate on the "information highway" and somehow a great many people who know better are pretending that it is just another grand venture like the interstates or the space program, when it is actually something of much greater consequence for two simple reasons: it will change everything and it is irreversible.[I've forgotten where I originally saw each of these articles linked from.]
Billy Gates why do you make this possible?
August 13, 2003 9:30 AM
Two machines in my office were booted from the network yesterday when they were found to be infected with MSBlast. The worm itself is not malicious (yet), but when your machine is banned, you can't get much work done. That worm yesterday cost me, my office mate, and many others time and money, and none of us did anything except run Windows. Look ma, no attachements!
I actually patched my Win2k machine before this worm could knock on its door ("hey! come on in!"). The other two Winblows machines were not so lucky.
My Mac and our Linux box had 0% downtime yesterday.
OmniWeb is relevant.
August 12, 2003 9:06 AM
For a very long time, I have felt that OmniWeb is an irrelevant annoyance on the web browser landscape. I mean, who are they kidding? another browser to support, that no one uses? I'm having a hard enough time writing compliant code that renders consistently in Mozilla and Internet Explorer. Safari came along and completely marginalized a mostly marginalized browser.
That has changed. OmniWeb 4.5 now "uses the WebCore framework from Apple for greatly improved standards support." That's the engine that runs Safari, so OmniWeb is essentially, just another Safari browser, but with one crucial difference. There's a JavaScript Console now, that shows me errors that might be occurring in the page I am developing. The error messages are a bit cryptic, but are still more useful than the errors that Safari gives you (read: none). I would prefer that the error messages were a bit more like Mozilla's though.
In the environment that I work in, we have more than 15% of our users running Safari. That's a pretty high percentage, and definitely passes the "they can't be ignored" ratio (which is, imho, about 8%). Not only can't they be ignored, but functionality can't just gracefully degrade, it has to be on par with IE and Mozilla support. OmniWeb's JavaScript Console makes that easier. If I were the business/marketing wonk down at The Omni Group, I'd be pushing that behind the registration fee. But I'm not, so I'm glad it's not.
The waiting is the hardest part.
August 6, 2003 2:57 AM
| I want these Gamecube games. | ||||
| Release Date | Title | Studio | Previews | |
| August 25, 2003 | F-Zero GX | Nintendo | IGN | Gamespot |
| September 10, 2003 | P.N.03 | Capcom Entertainment | IGN | Gamespot |
| September 23, 2003 | Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike | LucasArt | IGN | Gamespot |
| October 7, 2003 | Viewtiful Joe | Capcom Entertainment | IGN | Gamespot |
| October 9, 2003 | XIII | Ubi Soft | IGN | Gamespot |
| October 27, 2003 | Pikmin 2 | Nintendo | IGN | Gamespot |
| November 18, 2003 | Metal Arms: Glitch in the System | Vivendi Universal (Sierra) | IGN | Gamespot |
| December 1, 2003 | Mario Kart: Double Dash!! | Nintendo | IGN | Gamespot |
Is the setAttribute() method broken in IE?
August 5, 2003 4:50 AM
In a recent bit of development work, we discovered the beauty and pain of the setAttribute() method. Specifically, we wanted to dynamically create more form elements for people to fill out without having to go back to the server and add in the HTML. So, we do a createlement() and then add in the various attributes that make up an input box. Here's the basics...
var input = document.createElement("INPUT");
input.setAttribute("type","text");
input.setAttribute("name","myinput");
input.setAttribute("id","myinput");
That makes a new input element, and then sets all of the attributes and their values. The result should be something like this...
<input type="text" name="myinput" id="myinput">You can try that code right here... When you click on "Add an Input" some more complex JavaScript than quoted above will execute, and if you are using Navigator, Safari or Mozilla, you will get a new input with all if its necessary attributes defined and populated. The innerHTML will be alerted so you can verify that. Try it, and then view the page source to see what the code is doing.
Notice that I used the word "should" in the my comments above. I say the 's' word for a couple of reasons. Internet Explorer 6 on Win 2k Pro doesn't set any of the attributes. And Internet Explorer 5.2.3 for Mac OSX does something even worse, it throws a JavaScript error on the attempt to set the type attribute. Scouring the net for answers yielded frustrating results.
One particularly delicious find mentions that the Microsoft Developer site provides code that doesn't execute. When I run the code at that link, I get an error at the attempt to set the type attribute. The MSDN even talks about the method as if it were fully supported, but I'm not so sure about that. The only working example I could find seems to be completely IE/Windows specific and mentions that "his method requires an object participating in persistence".
My conclusion is that the setAttribute method is not fully supported in Internet Explorer. So, we resorted to workarounds, and found one. If you do a createElement("SPAN") and then pump it full of innerHTML and then append that to something, you will get your desired effect. But, that's at the price of using non-DOM code.
If anyone else can shed any more light on this, please do. My knowledge on the subject is anecdotal and derived from experimentation. Other data includes weird comments like the following from O'Reilly...
"The book says that the setAttribute() method in IE4 through 5.5 uses propertynames instead of attributenames. I experienced that the same behaviour holds for IE6.0 for PC."Again, please let me know if you know anything that hasn't been mentioned here already.