Has anyone else run into problems with their JSON and Firefox 3? We are rounding up development on one of the projects I am working on and Firefox 3 has thrown us a curve ball. Firefox 2, Safari 2.04, Safari 3, IE 6, IE 7 all test out fine on Mac and Windows.I have read that there was a new JSON interpreter in FF3, but I expected new…to mean better, not broken. Any thoughts?
I’ve had it! I bought Need for Speed Carbon the day it arrived in stores. I ran out after work handed over my hard earned cash and ran home to install it. It was fun, and I loved it. Sounds great. But the game crashes all the time. Random crashes, no warning, no error, straight to desktop crashes. All the time. Patch 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, none of them do anything to improve the situation. I’ve reinstalled the game, Direct X, updated drivers all the recommended support tips. No good, still crashes. I started playing again, because I love the game and I bought it, and it still crashes. Because it’s random I can sometimes get through a fair bit before it crashes, other times one race. Sometimes in the car store, other times after cut scenes, the last time, which prompted me to write this, right in the middle of a race. ARGGGGHHH!!!!
Maybe it’s my system. Could be. But why wouldn’t Doom 3, Quake 4, Half-life 2, Tomb Raider, Bioshock, or Need for Speed underground, underground 2, or Most Wanted crash then too? In fact no other game I’ve played has crashed. My system is pretty much top of the line. Core 2 6400, 2Gb RAM, ATI 1900XTX 512Mb VRAM.
Why wouldn’t a company write a patch to resolve such a widespread, common problem. This is a well documented issue:
I understand not knowing how to trace an un-reproducible bug, that doesn’t seem to be a problem here. I understand having hardware that doesn’t meet the system requirements, not an issue as far as I’ve read. I understand abandoning a project, not the case here as there have been three patches released since it launch. So what’s the problem?
More importantly I want to know why EA would think that I would actually buy the next installment of this game that comes out this week, Need for Speed Pro Street, when they haven’t even gotten the last one to work! I for one am waiting to buy this game until the user reviews come out, becasue even the game magazines didn’t report this problem with carbon. Buyer beware.
Right after I wrote this article, I found that the demo was online for Need For Speed Pro Street. I downloaded the 750 Mb file, installed it, and ran it. It trudged through the intro movies, flashy animations etc… Then I set my video setting to match my screen, this game at least supports my wide screen monitor, unlike Carbon. Setup my game pad. Then started the demo for the speed challenge. CRASH!!!!! I tried again, having to repeat all my setup procedures again. This time I quit after changing my settings, anticipating the crash and not want to set up my screen and controls again. Re-launched and tried again to start the race. CRASH!!!!!!!!! Wow, now I really want to buy this game.
Aren’t demos supposed to be the compelling, “oh my this is so amazing I have to play the full game” experience? The “this blew my mind, now I want to give them my credit card number” kind of experience? Oh well, guess I’ll save my money for the Orange Box, Crysis, or anything that doesn’t have the EA name on it. Pathetic!!!
One of the often overlooked problems with our dwindling oil future is plastic. As we continue to burn oil in our engines we are using a valuable resource that could be used for durable plastic goods. When the oil runs out, or becomes extremely rare and expensive, how will we manufacture plastics? We rely heavily on plastics for all our products; electronics, transportation, medical technologies, construction, and housing. There are few things today that do not rely on plastics and polymers.
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It’s amazing to me how many times I read an article and end up disagreeing with the conclusion. Not because I don’t like the results, but I don’t like how they arrived at the conclusion. For example I read an article stating that California leads the nation in motorcycle theft rates.
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Getting back to design and development topics I thought it would be valuable to offer my insight on this product. Being a courseware developer over the last 11 years or so, I’ve worked with a lot of tools. For most courses developing in either HTML, or Flash or a combination of both is my preferred method. It offers a vast amount of control and creativity. These methods do require a higher level of skill in web development, animation, and scripting but the results are well worth the cost. On the other hand Adobe Captivate offers some flexibility and a relatively easy learning curve for developers, and instructional designers and can result in a very professional result. Here’s my take the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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As a follow up to the article on cheap carbon frames I wanted to make a few additional points about bicycle quality that are less specific than one frame material. To begin, I think that everyone should ride bicycles. Bicycles provide low impact healthy exercise that is fun for all ages, and even more fun to do as a group. To get started you need to have a bicycle. If you already have one, or need to get one, here are some simple rules to follow when looking for a good bike.
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Finally an excuse to rant about an environmental issue. Blog Action Day has asked that bloggers around the world call attention to the global issue that affects everyone, the environment. Here’s the details:
Publish a post on their blog which relates to an issue of their own choice pertaining to the environment.
For example: A blog about money might write about how to save around the home by using environmentally friendly ideas. Similarly a blog about politics might examine what weight environmental policy holds in the political arena.
So here’s my take on what designers everywhere can do to help. Continue Reading »
Companies need to check to see if there’s already a solution before solving problems. The new wheel is Tabblo, a slick web based technology for internet users to print blogs, images on flickr, and other web sites. Whoo-hoo now I can print web pages… Hmmm I don’t remember not being able to print web pages before. Well here’s the story. Continue Reading »
I started out using computers a long time ago. Here is a brief re-cap: My first computer was a Commodore PET, simple and fun. I moved form platform to platform as different options became available for me to experience: Apple II’s at school, a Mac SE that my parents bought, PCs running DOS for Autocad. From that point on I stuck with DOS/Windows based machines because I had invested in software for that platform.
As most people know, Windows is a double edged sword, it seems easy at first but there are lots of potholes on this road. Windows 3.1 seemed to become corrupted almost weekly, and I was constantly re-installing it. Windows 95 was more stable, but you always had to exit into DOS to get some applications to run. Windows NT 4 suffered a similar problem as 95, and was drastically different in terms of system administration. Windows 98, and ME were really only patches to 95 to support USB and a few other technologies. And then finally windows 2000. Stable and robust like NT 4, but more inline with the workstation user than NT 4 which really felt like a server environment. I really liked Win2K. Even after XP came out, Win2K was better because it was just as stable as XP, but could be run on half the computer that XP required. Half the RAM, drive space, and video card. Eventually XP’s bells and whistles won me over and I switched. It made some tasks really easy, and the improvements from day to day were enough to convince me to switch. When I built my new PC I wanted to move XP onto it, so I had to decide whether I wanted to shell out for another license of XP, or try something more daring. I settled on trying Linux. Continue Reading »
Hello again and welcome to the Microsoft show, the greatest show on earth. Where the marketing department seems to have a bigger budget than the developers. It seems now that they aren’t pleased that so many people are waiting until the big bugs are worked out before upgrading to Vista. They are now about to launch a new marketing attack to coerce consumers that everything is ok, they don’t need to wait for the service packs. Do they really think that jedi mind tricks work on consumers?I won’t rehash the article but I would like to articulate why people are legitimately hesitant; no two people can agree on whether or not it is worth upgrading! Continue Reading »
