On Monday, 15 July 2013 at 09:56:07 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> I use SRWare Iron in place of Chrome (as I said, it literally is
> Chrome), but if you have to put up with Chrome's "bug of the day" junk
> then yea I guess that wouldn't work. Although at that point I would
> reach for VirtualBox. If I ever have to run the real Chrome, it's
> getting its ass sandboxed.
I agree with much of what you say about how the web is broken, though I don't understand your disdain for Chrome, but there's absolutely no reason to use Iron.  I analyzed its source a couple years back and it's basically a scam:

http://web.archive.org/web/20120331155237/http://chromium.hybridsource.org/the-iron-scam

You're getting delayed Chrome source with a different theme.  There's almost no difference, other than being exposed to security bugs longer, which are patched in Chrome's constant releases.

On Mon, 15 Jul 2013 16:23:39 +0200
"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think XP started the downhill trend, maybe even 2000, with changing the explorer around. I really liked it in Win95 - it just got the job done in a simple, straightforward way.
> 

For me, XP was the peak of Windows and Vista started the consistent decline. I do like how from 2k on you can take a non-dual pane explorer window and make the treeview pane appear by just clicking one button. The "tasks" pane is useless, but you can easily make the treeview pane the default. OTOH, one of my biggest XP annoyances is that unlike Win7, XP doesn't *always* respect your "default to treeview instead of tasks pane" setting (ex: if you open a directory via an icon on the desktop).

> That said though, I don't have too much trouble with the newer Windowses. I actually like Vista!
> 

Heh, I tend to be kinda mixed on "Vista vs Win7". Win7 is a little less buggy (I'm actually trying to repair my mom's Vista machine even as I type this), but Vista doesn't have that horrible MS Dock taskbar replacement, or that infinitely obnoxious and never helpful "popup window screenshots *every* freaking time your mouse goes near the dock" (I went through soooo much trouble to finally get rid of those on my Win7 machine - which I would have already converted to an XP box if it wasn't a laptop.)

Neither Vista nor 7 let me have my XP-style "all programs" menu without using the third party "Classic Shell" utility (which I *highly* recommend for any post-XP user - it's an essential part of making Win7 tolerable IMO.)

I do actually like a lot of the ribbon stuff though. I don't see what the big problem is, it's just a toolbar with better grouping and a better more varied set of UI controls. Win7's MS Paint is the best version by far. (not that that's saying a lot being MS paint, but it's always come in handy now and then.)

> > Yup. So depressingly true. And what's really bizarre about it is that a LOT of that JS is specifically in the name of speeding up the site ("Because you don't have to redownload *all* 1k of HTML on every link!")
> 
> Oh yeah, I have to deal with this a lot too. The big thing is even in ideal situations, an ajax request is likely about the same speed as a full refresh, since on most sites, it is dominated by request latency anyway! If it takes 50 ms for your signal to cross the internet and 5ms to generate the ajax and 10ms to generate the full page.... the whole ajax thing only saved you maybe 10% of the already very fast speed.
> 

Exactly.

And on top of that, most ajaxy sites will actually perform ajax requests *during initial page load*! That's so damn pointless. For god's sake, if something's supposed to show by default, then *just bake it into the page itself*! The only time JS *ever* needs to run upon page load is to undo any non-JS fallbacks.

> (If your site takes longer than 50ms to load, I think you've gotta spend some time in the profiler regardless.)
> 

I don't think anyone who uses Ajax ever does any profiling. (I'm not even being sarcastic. I really doubt that any more than maybe 0.1% of Ajax devs do even basic handheld-stopwatch profiling, especially on any browser that isn't V8.)

> 
> Important to get this working though is to set the right cache headers on everything. And I betcha that's where people make mistakes. I like to cache those ajax answers too when I do have to use them, because killing the server round trip latency is a huge win.
> 

Yea, it is easy (and frankly, very tempting!) to overlook HTTP cache
settings.

> If you're using it from a CDN so the browser has cached bytecode (or whatever they do), you can get it reasonably quickly, about 10ms added if you reference it.
> 
> ....but that's actually pretty rare. I don't remember the number, but there was a survey of web traffic that found a big percentage of users aren't cached.

Interesting. I wonder why exactly that is.

> And if you are slow for first time users, how much you want to bet they'll just hit back, try the next guy's link, and never return?
> 

Yup. Hell, I know *I* do that. Why go playing some random web developer's game of "set up your browser to be how I think it should be" when there's twenty other search hits I can just use instead?

> [JQuery] has some nice things in it, but just isn't worth making my site 5x slower than it would be without it.

That's a pretty good summary of it.

> > Just so I can do as much as I can without putting up
> > with a unified forward/back, browser skin, address bar with
> > unicorn-rainbow-vomit Fisher-Price-sized text, or all that UI
> > over-minimalism.
> 
> Let me show you what my firefox looks like:
> 
> http://arsdnet.net/firefox.png
> 
> I had to change a few settings to get it there, but I think this isn't too bad at all, and as you can see, it is a fairly new version. (I'm probably 10 versions behind again, it has been like three months!!!!! but meh.)
> 

Hmm, yea, that's not too bad, although I have found Linux FF tends to have a better default UI (that is, matches the system better) than Windows FF anyway. The whole unified forward/back still annoys the hell out of me though (actually, that doesn't appear to even *have* the dropdown thing - another "modern FF" blunder), and so does the unified "stop/reload" (not that browser "stop" buttons have *ever* actually worked at all).

>(I'm probably 10 versions behind again, it has been like
> three months!!!!! but meh.)

Heh, yea, that's the whole Chrome-envy thing again. Everyone wants to be Chrome, even if their users use the browser because it *isn't* Chrome. Kinda like how MS is obsessively trying to be Apple even though 90% of desktops are Windows *because* Windows isn't Mac.

> > Heh, I can't stand tiny TVs (I don't even like using portable game systems).
> 
> Maybe I'm weird, but I don't like *big* tvs. Too much light, weird movement just looks wrong to my eyes, and watching them for a while hurts my brain, literally, I get headaches.
> 
> Might not all be size itself, could be the high def, frame interpolation, lcd tech, whatever, but I just really prefer my old tvs.

TVs are another thing I could go on and on about. My XBox1 and Wii look great on my 30ish-inch SD CRT (especially XBox Doom3 - that looks like a freaking PS3 game), but using the exact same connectors they look like total shit on my sister's fancy new Samsung 1080p LCD. Blurry as hell no matter what the settings, and ghosts like crazy in any dark scenes. Remember the old Sega GameGear's crappy LCD? That's what the normally-great-looking Doom3 looks like on that "modern" HD LCD.

The PS3, of course, looks much better on the HD LCD than an SD CRT (at least when HDMI is used). Although for most games it's not nearly as much of a difference as you'd think. Call of Duty Modern Warfare on PS3 looks pretty much equally fantastic either way.

Screen size makes much more of a difference on PS3 than resolution. Probably at least 95% of PS3 games I've tried include text that's so damn *small* that's it's barely readable on even a 29" set *regardless* of resolution, and 29" *is* a perfectly respectable size. Gamedevs don't seem to realize that higher resolution doesn't make miniature text any bigger. They seem to think that everyone's playing on a fucking 45+" screen or sitting two feet away like they do during development. Or (like CliffyB) just don't give a shit about anyone who isn't just as much of a graphics whore and tech geek as they are.

> I have a 19" that I watch when I'm on the other side of the house (the room it is in is a long one, spanning the house's entire 30-some foot width) and a 13" one that is about 7 feet away from my computer desk that I watch a lot when sitting here.
> 
> Both televisions are from the 80's, but they still work quite well so like Rick Astley, I'm never gonna give them up.
> 

I would actually like to have a huge fancy HD set (provided I didn't have to pay much for it). *But* only in *addition* to my SD CRT (if I could find a way to actually fit them both in the living room). There's so much SD content out there that will never magically become HD (at least without requiring me to re-purchase the same damn stuff), and such things just look like absolute total shit on these supposedly great HD sets.

It's no wonder so many people think HD is such an *enormous* improvement over SD - they've been brainwashed by their HD sets into thinking that SD is far far worse than what it *really* was. Really HD is only a moderate improvement if you compare it to a *real* SD set instead of "SD on an HD set".

> 
> Interestingly too, I had a PS3 briefly. I say briefly because the piece of shit died on my before I even owned it for two full months.

Ouch. Usually it's the MS hardware that dies. And I don't just mean 360 red-rings. The Zune1 practically had an always-on self-destruct sequence. And I've had to do far more repairs to my XBox1 than my PS2 or GameCube (One bent controller port pin on my PS2, and no problems ever on the GC, but lots of issues on the XBox1 even though it's my favorite from that generation.)

> Maybe that's what I get for getting a cheap one on ebay, but the new prices are just unacceptably high.

Yea, it's nearly EOL and the new price is *still* what a launch-day system should cost. There's a good chain of used-game/video stores out my way call The Exchange <http://theexchange.com/> which tend to be very good. Used PS3s there are only around $120-$150 depending on model and stock. I assume GameStop is probably similar, though I haven't looked. That's still high for a, what, 7-year-old system, but ultimately a decent buy all things considered.  That's where mine is from and it's been working fine.

The problem with buying hardware on ebay is that there's no middle party trying to prevent the buyer from ending up with a dud. (There's ebay itself, but they can't do as much as a brick-and-mortar trade shop can.) With ebay, unless there's a failure out-of-the-box then you're pretty much screwed. I've been bitten by that before, too.

> Regardless, my playstation (one) was used too, and it still works. So was my super nintendo, etc. They all still work. I think they just don't make 'em like they used to.

Yup. 'Course, cartridge contacts wear out, and so do lasers, but still hardware is designed to be constantly replaced now and stuff just doesn't last. Especially smartphones - reliability on those is by far the worst. They're probably about on par with the older XBox 360 models.

> 
> Anyway, playing the ps3 on my friend's 32 inch high def tv hurts me horribly. My eyes get tired after about an hour. I thought it was maybe just because I'm getting too old for this shit, but then I played the very same game at my house on my little tv and was able to go 5 hours before feeling tired. It still fucked me up - lost sleep

That's strange. I wonder if maybe you're one of those people that's sensitive to the subtle flicker in backlights. Or maybe there's something about the lighting in the room that just doesn't mix well with the LCD, I've heard of that sort of issue before.

> > And it really gets me how touchscreen devices are promoted with the idealized concept of "touch" even though they *eliminate* tactile sensation.
> 
> Yup. And it is too easy to accidentally hit "buttons" and not know it. I was watching the tour de france on the ipad yesterday when the puppy had to go outside. I carried it with me figuring I can still watch it... but apparently my shirt brushed up against the screen and it interpreted that as a swipe motion that turned off the live stream!
> 

Yea, they need a "hold" switch like my portable music player has.

> Ugh! And there's other crap about the ipad too: changing the brightness means turning off the stream, slowly finding your way to settings, hitting that thing, sliding the bar up, then getting back to the video.
> 

I could go on forever about iOS goofiness.

On Mon, 15 Jul 2013 16:23:39 +0200
"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator@gmail.com> wrote:
> (Especially since cable is $70 / month. Really, at that obscene price, do they even need commercials anymore to turn a profit?

They're corporations. It's not about turning a profit. It's about being under a legal obligation to shareholders to extract *as much* money as possible. ('Course I think their current practices are *still* failing at that by running themselves into the ground.)

The worst thing wasn't paying a huge bill to get commercial breaks. The worst thing was paying a huge bill to get commercials *overlaid* on top of the actual shows. That was the tipping point for me. Plus the fact that there's no longer anything on cable that *isn't* a reality show. Even Food Network is pretty much 100% reality shows these days.

> canceled it in christmas 2011 and set up an antenna. I still get most the shows I watch over the air

Yea, we got rid of cable about a year ago and haven't regretted it (Well, except I do genuinely miss that two-month free trial of NHK they once gave us. I didn't understand most of the talking, I'm not fluent, but it still became my favorite channel. I watched it far too much.)

Honestly, I don't even watch over-the-air anymore anyway. If my digital converter box stopped working, I probably wouldn't notice. All I ever use my TV for is videogames and DVDs (usually anime) from the library. And sometimes netflix, but they keep making their PS3 UI worse and worse, and they're crap for anime anyway (netflix never does dual-audio tracks for anime).

> (higher quality too*)
> * The new digital tv over the air signal looks great, even on my
> old tvs, compared to digital cable. Which kinda amazes me, but it
> does. I guess it has to do with cable compression. The problem is
> if you don't get a good signal, it is unwatchable. And when it
> gets hot and/or windy, my signal gets crappy.

Yea, I absolutely couldn't believe how horrible cable's video quality suddenly became a couple years ago. I genuinely suspect that it may actually be MPEG 1, it really is that bad. And the A/V sync is almost always botched. And even after a replacement, the settop box's interface will would go completely unresponsive for up to a full minute at a time. Completely worthless service at any price.

> 
> With the old analog tv, it was almost always watchable. Maybe fuzzy or ghosting picture, but watchable, even in imperfect weather.
> 

Yea. Over-the-air digital is a bad deal. With OTA, there's *always* going to be periods of significant interference. And analog signals degrade *far* better with decreasing signal quality than digital signals do. And digital signals require a much stronger signal in the first place (Both my dad and grandmother went from plenty of channels to nearly no channels after the digital switch until they shelled out for ultra fancy new antennas). It was a questionable tradeoff at best.

> I think digital tv, maybe the PS3 too now that I'm thinking about it, are examples of where we're going toward more more more at the peak, more pixels, more channels, etc., while ignoring graceful degradation for an acceptable average.
> 

Yea.

> Yes, with a strong signal, 1080p might be great. But getting a black screen when the signal weakens sucks.

Or that awful digital "stutter". Analog interference is perfectly watchable and listenable. Digital interference (ie, the stuttering) just simply isn't.

>I betcha if they
> broadcast a highly error resistant 480i (or whatever standard tv resolution used to be)

Yea, for NTSC it's basically 480i. Slightly more for PAL (520i?) at the cost of a few less frames per second.

> on that same data stream, they could have gotten a much more reliable stream, giving a very consistent quality even in poor weather.
> 

Yea, I'm sure there's a lot they could have done. NTSC/PAL were invented how long ago? And look at what they've been able to do with cellular signals since then. Obviously the different operating frequencies make a HUGE difference in how much can be done, but if they were going to redo the protocol, I'm sure they could have done something far better than the non-degradable new system we ended up with.

> But then how would they sell people new high def equipment every other year?
> 

Same way cell phone industry does it. Make the quality of the design and manufacturing bad enough that they break down in around a year. ;)

> 
> Wow I'm getting off topic even for an off topic thread! Oh well.
> 

I'm probably becoming famous for that ;)

> > Actually, I think that's preferable as long as the UI matches (or rather, *is*) that of the user's associated video player program.
> 
> Yes, I like to use mplayer for things so I can skip and speed up easily. I don't like watching videos at normal speed (most the time), it just takes too long. With text, I can skim it for interesting parts. With video, I'd like to do the same but can't. Best I can do is play it at like 1.5x speed.... mplayer can do that.

So does PS3 I was surprised to discover. That may come in handy.

For PC, I use Media Player Classic Home Cinema. I only wish it supported Linux :(

> And mplayer takes like 1% cpu to play it. Flash takes like 110% cpu to do the same job. What trash.

Yea, Flash makes JS seem fast. Adobe never should have ventured outside of media production tools and into developer tools. It's clearly not within their area of expertise.

On Mon, 15 Jul 2013 16:47:45 +0200
"Joakim" <joakim@airpost.net> wrote:

> On Monday, 15 July 2013 at 09:56:07 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> > I use SRWare Iron in place of Chrome (as I said, it literally is
> > Chrome), but if you have to put up with Chrome's "bug of the
> > day" junk
> > then yea I guess that wouldn't work. Although at that point I
> > would
> > reach for VirtualBox. If I ever have to run the real Chrome,
> > it's
> > getting its ass sandboxed.
> I agree with much of what you say about how the web is broken, though I don't understand your disdain for Chrome, but there's absolutely no reason to use Iron.  I analyzed its source a couple years back and it's basically a scam:
> 
> http://web.archive.org/web/20120331155237/http://chromium.hybridsource.org/the-iron-scam
> 
> You're getting delayed Chrome source with a different theme. There's almost no difference, other than being exposed to security bugs longer, which are patched in Chrome's constant releases.

I really have had problems with Chrome (and other Google software) forcefully installing always-resident processes before, and giving me trouble getting rid of it. Never had such a problem with Iron. Even if Iron is just a few better defaults and some options I don't even want anyway removed, that certainly doesn't qualify as a "scam". Hell, Iron's website is already perfectly clear about the settings existing in Chrome but being forced to a specific setting in Iron: <http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php> The article makes it sound like SRWare is being deliberately deceptive, which is verifiably untrue.

Plus Chrome introduces bugs almost as much as it fixes them, so less frequent releases doesn't really bother me. And I wouldn't be using Chrome's auto-updater anyway (and if I did, I would only do it in a VM).

Iron may not be a big change, but it's proven itself to me in real-world usage to still be worthwhile.

And that archived article seems pretty biased. Ex: "...likely only to evade source analysis like I'm doing..." Uhh, accusational and speculative anyone? Especially since it's perfectly reasonable to figure the different version numbers could have more to do with divergent forks than actually "Iron deliberately changed the version number to be sneaky". Perfectly likely that Iron had merged in v4.x, then merged in various other changes, and just missed a line diff involving the v4->v5 version number change. But no, we're supposed to just *assume* it was intentional deception because that better supports the initial "Iron is a scam" position.

On Tuesday, 16 July 2013 at 01:09:18 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> I really have had problems with Chrome (and other Google software)
> forcefully installing always-resident processes before, and giving me
> trouble getting rid of it. Never had such a problem with Iron.
Chrome, which is based on the open-source Chromium project, has a built-in auto-updater which always stays resident and checks for updates.  Since Iron is based on Chromium, not Chrome, it may not have the auto-updater.

> Even if
> Iron is just a few better defaults and some options I don't even want
> anyway removed, that certainly doesn't qualify as a "scam". Hell,
> Iron's website is already perfectly clear about the settings existing
> in Chrome but being forced to a specific setting in Iron:
> <http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php> The
> article makes it sound like SRWare is being deliberately deceptive,
> which is verifiably untrue.
Iron has always billed itself as some sort of privacy fork.  For example, their FAQ says:

"Can't i just use an precompiled unchanged Chromium-Build from the Google Server?

This is not useful because the original Chromium-Builds have nearly the same functions inside than the original Chrome. We can only provide Iron because we massively modified the source."
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_faq.php

I verified that this is untrue in the linked article, at least back when they released Iron 3 and 4.  Nobody can verify it anymore, because even though there are still links for source download, they don't work, ie you can't download the source.  This probably breaks the LGPL license, but I've read that they stopped providing source a while back, likely after I analyzed it:

http://www.insanitybit.com/2012/06/23/srware-iron-browser-a-real-private-alternative-to-chrome-21/

> Plus Chrome introduces bugs almost as much as it fixes them, so less
> frequent releases doesn't really bother me. And I wouldn't be using
> Chrome's auto-updater anyway (and if I did, I would only do it in a VM).
I don't track Iron closely, but I think they follow the same release schedule for major stable releases, only delayed, and likely without all the smaller point releases with security fixes that Chrome provides.  So you have all the disadvantages of google's six-week release schedule, with the added disadvantages of Iron's delays and omissions: I don't see the benefit.

Chrome does introduce some bugs as it updates, but I don't think any other browser is any better.  I don't get your paranoia about the auto-updater: what makes you think it does anything other than check for updates?  My understanding is that the source for the updater is available.

> Iron may not be a big change, but it's proven itself to me in
> real-world usage to still be worthwhile.
There is one advantage to Iron: it provides occasional builds of the stable branch of Chromium, which google does not provide except as part of the Chrome Stable channel.  You could build the stable branch of Chromium yourself, but I understand if you don't want to put in the effort.  I suspect you would be as happy with the Chromium builds that are provided, which are only from the trunk branch:

http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-snapshots/index.html

> And that archived article seems pretty biased. Ex: "...likely only to
> evade source analysis like I'm doing..." Uhh, accusational and
> speculative anyone? Especially since it's perfectly reasonable to
> figure the different version numbers could have more to do with
> divergent forks than actually "Iron deliberately changed the version
> number to be sneaky". Perfectly likely that Iron had merged in v4.x,
> then merged in various other changes, and just missed a line diff
> involving the v4->v5 version number change. But no, we're supposed to
> just *assume* it was intentional deception because that better supports
> the initial "Iron is a scam" position.
The reason it's intentional deception is because I analyzed the Iron source, which certainly doesn't "massively modify the source" for Chromium, as they claim.  I made a guess that they chose to go in and change the version number to evade such analysis, which fits the pattern of deception.

I didn't get into all this in the article, but they've never had a public source code repo, which is suspicious for someone who claims to be "open source."  They were dumping code in 7z archives on rapidshare instead!  Without a repo where I could track commits, I had to download the Iron source then manually track down which version of Chromium corresponded to that version of Iron, since the version number was changed.  That took time, and given their pattern of deception, I can only assume it was a deliberate move to throw off such analysis.

I understand your suspicion of google.  I don't use their services other than search and have never signed up for facebook either, but that's no reason to use shady software just because it's "not google."  There are real privacy concerns with all these services, but if we don't stick to the facts, we damage our case.  I don't like what the Iron guy did and have documented the issues, it is up to you and others to decide what to believe.

On Tue, 16 Jul 2013 07:28:35 +0200
"Joakim" <joakim@airpost.net> wrote:
> 
> I don't get your paranoia about the auto-updater:

Paranoia has nothing to do with it. I don't want it always running in the background, I don't want it auto-updating, and I certainly don't want a program installing an always running service I never asked it to install in the first place.

>what makes you think it does anything other than check for updates?

I never said it did.

> I understand your suspicion of google.  I don't use their services other than search and have never signed up for facebook either, but that's no reason to use shady software just because it's "not google."  There are real privacy concerns with all these services, but if we don't stick to the facts, we damage our case.  I don't like what the Iron guy did and have documented the issues, it is up to you and others to decide what to believe.

"Because it isn't Google" has nothing to do with my usage of Iron. I use it because I've had problems with Chrome that I haven't had with Iron. And if I don't have to go through the bother of configuring those settings in the first place and making sure to get Chromium instead of Chrome then all the better (Seriously, why the fuck does Google have two basically-identical browsers and the whole "Chrome vs Chromium" bullshit anyway? Makes no fucking sense.)

I don't give a shit what the primary motivation of Iron's creator is or how much work it did or didn't take to create. I use it because it works the way I want it to and Chrome doesn't.

Honestly, I don't get all the FUD about Iron. A lot of stuff uses ad-supported models, big freaking deal, welcome to the web. There's no malware and no money charged, so there's clearly no "scam". Maybe some stuff is overstated, but try finding a "legit" corporation that doesn't twist and spin facts in their marketing. Not that I like that, but it just means that SRWare is no more of a scam than Johnson & Johnson, or General Mills or whatever. It all just sounds like a big overreaction to a tool that just simply isn't *as* large of an improvement as it makes itself out to be (which again, is a pretty common thing). Overstatements or not, worries about him being some sort of "sellout" or not (it's not as if Google is there for pure altruism instead of trying to make a buck either), regardless of any of that it's a useful Chromium distro.

On Tuesday, 16 July 2013 at 09:02:19 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Chrome then all the better (Seriously, why the fuck does Google have
> two basically-identical browsers and the whole "Chrome vs Chromium"
> bullshit anyway? Makes no fucking sense.)
Chromium is an open source project.  Chrome is google's build of Chromium, with some additional proprietary bits added, like a closed-source pdf viewer or licensed audio/video codecs compiled in:

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ChromiumBrowserVsGoogleChrome

They use a hybrid model with Chrome, where it's 99% open with added proprietary bits, a subject I've talked about before on this NG.

> I don't give a shit what the primary motivation of Iron's creator is or
> how much work it did or didn't take to create. I use it because it works
> the way I want it to and Chrome doesn't.
You are free to use whatever you want, but when you say you don't care about what this guy has done, you lose all credibility on privacy and security.

> Honestly, I don't get all the FUD about Iron. A lot of stuff uses
> ad-supported models, big freaking deal, welcome to the web. There's no
> malware and no money charged, so there's clearly no "scam". Maybe some
> stuff is overstated, but try finding a "legit" corporation that doesn't
> twist and spin facts in their marketing. Not that I like that, but it
> just means that SRWare is no more of a scam than Johnson & Johnson, or
> General Mills or whatever. It all just sounds like a big overreaction
> to a tool that just simply isn't *as* large of an improvement as it
> makes itself out to be (which again, is a pretty common thing).
> Overstatements or not, worries about him being some sort of "sellout"
> or not (it's not as if Google is there for pure altruism instead of
> trying to make a buck either), regardless of any of that it's a useful
> Chromium distro.
Haha, now outright lying about how you "massively modified the source" or that you're still "open source" is merely overblown "marketing?"

You're twisting yourself into pretzels to try and justify this choice.  Maybe you didn't know all this about Iron before, but it seems like an irrational, personal attachment to keep using and defending this browser after all this.

On Tuesday, 16 July 2013 at 00:26:51 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Vista doesn't have that horrible MS Dock taskbar

Worth noting you can turn that off: I have 7 on the laptop I'm on now and after a few settings changes, it is very similar to vista. To get a good taskbar you need to turn off the group similar windows function (which I hated when it was introduced in XP anyway).

Your quick launch still keeps their place but that doesn't bug me like I thought it would, it is actually kinda nice.

> window screenshots *every* freaking time your mouse goes near

Oh yeah, that is annoying. I hate hover things in general. The worst of them is on websites. My bank website used to have hover menus right above the login thing...

So I go to the address bar and type in my bank dot com. Then i move the mouse down toward the login form and click it.... but oops, on the way down, I hovered over the stupid menu, so now by click is redirecting me to some new site! AAAARGGGTHHHH!

The taskbar thing is similarly annoying but at least it pops up above, so you are less likely to accidentally click it in transit. Though I have many times clicked one window then went up and clicked another window because it popped up. God I hate hover crap.


> I do actually like a lot of the ribbon stuff though. I don't see what the big problem is

It's different. I still haven't really figured out the new Paint UI. I don't think it sucks, but it does take some getting used to.

> Interesting. I wonder why exactly that is.

IIRC it was because a lot of browsers clear cache on close, or the cache expired too soon.


> Hmm, yea, that's not too bad, although I have found Linux FF tends to have a better default UI (that is, matches the system better) than Windows FF anyway.

Yes, I agree. And even there, I had to do an about:config thing to kill the unified back/forward nonsense.

On Windows, firefox can look ok by doing the same adjustments, but one thing that still annoys me is that there's a weird shadow thing behind the menu. It isn't too bad but just seems pointless.

> and so does the unified "stop/reload"

Oh yeah, that's annoying. But the keyboard is a bit better there, f5+esc are easy to hit and more reliable anyway.

> Remember the old Sega GameGear's crappy LCD?

lol I actually liked it because it was backlit! Ate through batteries like mad but it was usable in varied lighting conditions.

> Screen size makes much more of a difference on PS3 than resolution. Probably at least 95% of PS3 games I've tried
> include text that's so damn *small* that's it's barely
> readable on even a 29" set

Yes, I can barely even read it on my friend's larger tv in the call of duty game (especially when we play split screen, no point even trying to read the score, 8, 3, and 11 all look the same to me at those sizes)


> Really HD is only a moderate improvement if you compare
> it to a *real* SD set instead of "SD on an HD set".

Aye. And even so, meh. I was called a troll a while ago because somebody on youtube did a cgi remake of some Star Trek 2 scenes, and I said my old VHS copy looked better.

But it did. The cgi artist did a fine job, sure, but the original director and model makers did a *better* job and the VHS captured it just fine. (One thing I think the cgi artist missed was the deliberate angles and coloring choices the director made in the original movie, to get across the contrast of hero and villain. If you've seen the movie, you might remember what I mean - the Enterprise was often shot with bluer light and taller angles (if that's the right term), making it look more good and innocent, whereas the Reliant had low angles and redder lights to look menacing - a perfect fit for the scene. The cgi artist had bazillion polygons but didn't capture the same atmosphere.

Then there were things that just looked silly, like cgi smoke. Bah, the original effects were kinda cheesy too but I bought them. Maybe thanks to the actors but still, my old tape looked fine whatever the reason.)




> That's strange. I wonder if maybe you're one of those people that's sensitive to the subtle flicker in backlights.

Maybe, but the lcd computer screen doesn't bug me the same. idk.

On Tuesday, 16 July 2013 at 00:28:11 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> They're corporations. It's not about turning a profit. It's about being under a legal obligation to shareholders to extract
> *as much* money as possible.

Indeed. But at this rate, they're not even staying competitive with their corporate alternatives. The cable company will have to shape up or accept defeat, but nope, they keep raising their rates. Maybe they're just milking what they can.


And yeah, I agree with the sad state of tv. A lot of what I watch are actually reruns but there's a lot I like about regular tv over dvds: the cost (which was a pure loss with cable, but a win with over the air), the variety, and actually I kinda like commercials because they give me a chance to get up. Yes, I could pause a dvd whenever, and change the discs for variety, but eh the regular tv is nice and mindless.

> (usually anime)

Sailor Moon rocks btw!


> Or that awful digital "stutter".

Ugh, yeah. It is beautiful with a good signal, but just awful otherwise.

> were going to redo the protocol, I'm sure they could have done
> something far better than the non-degradable new system we ended up with.

Yeah, my thought is at least they could interlace the frames, using the same signal they have now, just changing it from a high res compressed stream to a lower res, redundant and error-correction supporting stream. So it sends frames like:

1 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 3 2 2 1 4 3 2 1 5 4 3 2

well that's confusing looking, but the idea is if the resolution is like 1/4 the size, we should be able to send each frame 4 times in the same digital signal. So then if your connection cut out and you lost a frame, it is ok because you'll have another chance to pick it up 50ms later. So if you then have a small like 16 frame buffer in the box you could pick up almost a second to recover a frame and piece it together from its sub-frame checksumed chunks as it is rebroadcast, to give the user a smooth picture.


Or something like that, I'm not a signal expert nor a reliability engineer, but it seems to me that it ought to be possible.

On Tue, 16 Jul 2013 15:11:21 +0200
"Joakim" <joakim@airpost.net> wrote:

> On Tuesday, 16 July 2013 at 09:02:19 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> > Chrome then all the better (Seriously, why the fuck does Google
> > have
> > two basically-identical browsers and the whole "Chrome vs
> > Chromium"
> > bullshit anyway? Makes no fucking sense.)
> Chromium is an open source project.  Chrome is google's build of Chromium, with some additional proprietary bits added, like a closed-source pdf viewer or licensed audio/video codecs compiled in:
> 
> https://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ChromiumBrowserVsGoogleChrome
> 
> They use a hybrid model with Chrome, where it's 99% open with added proprietary bits, a subject I've talked about before on this NG.

Ok, good to know. I do still think they could have handled it without splitting it into two barely-different projects. And from what I'm seen, Google gives off a very strong impression that "Chrome" is their browser for end-users to actually use, and "Chromium" is just...some..."thing" for developers (from what I've seen, Google hasn't been particularly clear on it, ever even really say much about it at all on their Chrome site, but I do appreciate your clarification).

So if someone came along with a "basically Chrome with some stuff removed" that's *really* just minor tweaks on Chromium, then I do think Google kind of brought that situation on themselves. And I don't think it's necessarily bad, either. Yes, it would be better if SRWare was more accurate in stating what Iron exactly is, but still, a prebuilt distro of Chromium, without the lack of clarity on what Chromium is, and with default settings changed to what a lot of people would change them to anyway - I do think there is genuine value in that.

Of course, Google could easily counteract that value by saying right
there on their Chrome site "Ok, and here we also have a pre-built
Chromium which is Chrome but without the auto-updater and non-OSS bits,
etc". Or better yet: "Here's the Chrome installer, and it lets
you choose whether or not to install the auto-updater, and whether or
not to include the non-OSS extensions, and has an option for "ultra
privacy" defaults where none of the controversial settings are enabled
and nothing is ever implicitly sent to Google" (Obviously wording can
be adjusted).

But last I looked, Google didn't have anything like that, but Iron does, so there's value in it.

> > I don't give a shit what the primary motivation of Iron's
> > creator is or
> > how much work it did or didn't take to create. I use it because
> > it works
> > the way I want it to and Chrome doesn't.
> You are free to use whatever you want, but when you say you don't care about what this guy has done, you lose all credibility on privacy and security.
> 

Not that I'm trying to change your mind here, but what I'm seeing here is: Some guy created a useful product (even if it is only minimally useful) because he wanted to generate ad revenue. There's nothing questionable or even remotely uncommon about that.

> Haha, now outright lying about how you "massively modified the source" or that you're still "open source" is merely overblown "marketing?"
> 

"Massively" is a highly subjective term. Now I agree with you that if the changes are indeed what your articles say (and I'm not doubting that) than that doesn't match what I, or most people, would consider "massively". But it *is* a subjective term and business *do* exploit that all the time. I don't like that they do, I wish they didn't, but we don't go calling every such thing a "scam".

As far as the "open source" thing, well if the source really is closed off now (and not just some site snafu or something) then yea, that is a license violation and needs to be changed. And proper public VCS would be good, although I've seen a LOT of developers who are still stuck in pre-VCS mode and unfortunately don't really "get" the whole GitHub thing. Not an ideal way for Iron to work, but since I'm only interested in using it, not building or modifying it, then it's not a deal-breaker for me. There's a lot of useful freeware that, for some ridiculous reason I've never understood, was closed-source. 'Course, most of those aren't license-bound to *be* OSS.

> You're twisting yourself into pretzels to try and justify this choice.  Maybe you didn't know all this about Iron before, but it seems like an irrational, personal attachment to keep using and defending this browser after all this.

Just because I'm not knee-jerking at some new information (that really isn't anywhere near as condemning as you make it out to be) hardly qualifies as "twisting...irrational, personal attachment", etc.