One small company in Norway can produce a browser that is lightning fast works on almost any Operating System including most mobile phones but a giant like Microsoft with nearly limitless resources can’t even produce a browser in over 8 years (IE6 came in 2001) that is even remotely comparable to anybody else?
Now the IE Blog claims that IE9 will be better and they show a graph of how IE9 is worse than any browser out there (though better than IE8). They claim that it will be better in the future but how much better will everyone else be by the time IE9 comes out? Both Safari and Chrome use Webkit. Firefox and Opera use their own rendering engines.
Web apps are the present and the future. Everybody knows that. Also all web developers know that IE sucks so none of us use IE for anything except testing. IE is so bad that Google needed to launch a plugin that would make IE use Chrome to render web pages because there is no way some of their new and upcoming stuff would work in IE.
Back to the point. Why we web developers hate IE:
- Everything we make generally works flawlessly in all other browsers without much effort. Then we look at it in IE and it is all messed up, especially if you use anything that is a relatively new thing. That means we need to add hacks specifically for IE.
- All the versions of IE need their own hacks. But we can’t install multiple versions of IE on the same computer. So we have Virtual Machines or just separate computers or different members of our teams having different versions on their computers to test out.
- Every new version of IE that comes out makes our code more convoluted thanks to checks for more versions of IE.
- Sometimes no matter what you do, newer standards will just never make it to IE in the near future generally slowing down the progress of the web. Take for example the IE blog above. They add things like better font rendering, hardware acceleration (what good is hardware acceleration when it is accelerating something that is wrong?). The most important parts aka standards are ignored – see the 32/100 Acid 3 score. There is not even a mention of HTML5 etc.
If you read the comments, the most common comment is that Microsoft should give up on their rendering engine and just use webkit. I’m sure every web developer will jump for joy and host a party because the worst nightmare of their job – trying to be compatible with IE – will be gone. That is never going to happen so somebody summed it up in the comments:
IE is fairly analogous to the cockroach. You can step on it, blow it up and irradiate it, but now you have an annoyed radioactive abomination that’s going to go breed more annoyed radioactive abominations.
Thankfully a lot of major websites are dropping support for IE6 which hopefully will make those IE6 users out there upgrade or switch. But with IE9 there will be one more thing to test for. All of us developers want is for Microsoft to get out of the browser business. Why does Microsoft even bother spending millions of dollars to make an inferior product that is full of holes? Why can’t they just adopt the Google and Apple path of using a standard freely available engine and just improve the user experience? It can still be IE, but at least it will be a good one.
The only reason I can think that MS still works on IE is that it is integrated into everything – Windows, all their development tools and most Microsoft software somehow depends on IE. While I’m complaining here is one more – even Microsoft has a hard time developing complex apps that work in IE and other browsers. That’s why they have separate applications for Outlook web services for IE/non IE browsers.
Since I really don’t have the time to go through the pros and cons here for the tons and tons of available strollers like I did for car seats before Ahan was born, I’ll get to the exciting final moments before clicking on the order button quickly.
Anyway, after spending a few days going through literally two days going through stroller reviews online for maybe 20 or 30 strollers, we finally came down to a choice between the Baby Jogger City Mini and the Joovy Kooper. The Joovy Groove was also a contender but was unavailable everywhere, probably because the 2009 models are all gone and the 2010s are about to launch.
Both these strollers are what I would call mid priced. We really didnt want to spend a fortune on the Mutsys, Phil and Teds or Valco Baby strollers. Not that the fortune gets you what you really want – a lightweight stroller that is easy to fold and has a large canopy. For a few minutes we almost decided to by a cheap throwaway stroller that would last us for one trip. At these times I always think about the money we have wasted before buying cheap-ass products only to be replaced by a better version when the thing dies.
Finally we settled on the Joovy for two primary reasons – 1) It was about 45$ cheaper and 2) We already have a three wheeled stroller good for walking and one not so important reason that the stroller looks fantastic and unique.
Also after a lot of deal hunting, we found a black Joovy for $160 at Stroller Depot and I also had a coupon for 5% off - holtrav09 – making the final price $152. The cheapest we found the City Mini was $195.50 at Albee Baby with their sitewide 15% off code 15off.
A while back when we switched to Dish Network from Comcast, I saw Dish had a set of packages called TurboHD which were HD only. Now we have a new HDTV, a baby and not that much time to watch TV and I saw the awesome quality of NBC HD over the air, I went looking for the TurboHD packages and I see they are gone. HD is now available only as an add on to their SD packages. Well Dish, I’m not paying extra for TV so I’m not switching.
Turbo HD was exactly what I was looking for. Less expensive, only a few channels that we watch and totally HD. Why did it have to go away? I wonder how life would be if we just got rid of the TV, upgraded our DSL connection to 3Mbps and connected a computer to our TV.
The net is abuzz with news of Blockbuster’s new kiosks with SD card movie rentals and most people just panning the idea. But I think that it is great. Here is why:
- The kiosk doesn’t have physical media so it can potentially store millions of movies.
- The kiosk will never run out of a particular movie
- People can play the movies on their netbooks (no dvd drives but SD slots, yes) on the go or on their phones (iPhones need not apply) or cameras (if the media is playable on those) etc.
- A lot of modern DVD players and TVs come with built in SD card readers, I know my Bluray player has one.
- You don’t need to drive back to return the movie. Redbox = $1/night = $4 for 4 nights but this is just $1.99 because never have to return it.
- SD cards go all the way upto 32GB with new 64GB cards just coming out giving you the potential to rent 10 or more movies at a time in HD if the kiosk lets you.
What’s not to like about the idea? Hopefully Blockbuster’s implementation is good to start with.
It seems Blockbuster is trying to throw everything and the kitchen sink at Netflix and Redbox. First the in-store exchanges for online rentals, then not charging extra for BluRay, Redbox style kiosks, acquiring a company for movie downloads (though they are not free like netflix), following Netflix in trying to get Blockbuster’s app on various devices like Tivo and Samsung players and now this.
Hopefully something will work out for them.
Letstalk.com has the Droid and the Droid Eris for $50 less than Verizon and without any rebate forms to submit!
That makes the Droid $150 and the Droid Eris $50! Also use my link to letstalk.com and use coupon code “holiday” to get another 5% off.
Here are trailers of movies I want to see that come out in the first three months of 2010. I will update this post as more trailers come along.
Daybreakers
Edge of Darkness
The Spy Next Door
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
Shutter Island
Takers
From Paris With Love
A Couple of Dicks
Alice in Wonderland
Green Zone
How to Train Your Dragon
I have more than 100 “Available” movies in my queue and here is what CS says in an email
Since you have fewer than 10 “Available” movies in queue, we may wait an extra day or two to ensure we’re always shipping the titles you want most.
To ensure consistency in shipping, we recommend keeping 10 or more available movies in your Queue. You can also set your preferences for shipments based on speed vs. Queue order. Go to My Account; Manage Account Settings; and choose Speed vs. Queue ship preferences. We’ll ship your next movies within 1 to 2 business days once your queue meets our recommendation
While Netflix has started shipping on Saturdays, Blockbuster has mostly stopped shipping on Mondays. In my experience, if I return all three movies on Friday/Saturday, one may or may not ship on Monday, one or two ship on Tuesday and one ships even later. I’ll update in future posts if selecting “Speed” changes this stupidity.
If an item is checked in on a weekend (including Friday) the next expected business day for a new shipment would fall on the following Tuesday with limited shipments on Monday.
To ensure consistent, prompt shipments please keep 15 or more “available” titles at the top of your queue.
Blockbuster recently updated the Queue options ending a longstanding complaint about the requirement to have available movies at the top of your queue.
But now their store return system is busted. I exchanged an online rental for a store rental. I returned the store rental the next day. 30 hours later the disc is still in my queue.
So I click the report button, and what I get is a notification to call the store.
So I call the store and their system says I returned the movie yesterday and also have a 1$ credit for returning it in one day.
Anyway I sent in a complaint to Blockbuster both on twitter and via their Customer service contact.
I’ll update this post when I get a response. But I’m sure this is a throttling method where they don’t want you to get discs very fast. I was hoping to test that that the “Speed” option really works and I run into this. I would switch to Netflix in a heartbeat if they didn’t charge extra for Bluray and I would stop hearing complaints about new movies not shipping to heavy users. At least Netflix doesn’t lie about throttling. They are intentionally vague but at least they admit it. Unlike BB, which just comes up with lame excuses.
Update: Blockbuster online customer service already responded (in less than two hours) that they have cleared the movie from my queue and I got the usual free rental coupon that I get every time I complain about Blockbuster screw-ups. An interesting thing in the email that the rep sent me is this
For consistent and prompt shipments, please keep 15 or more “available” titles at the top of your queue.
That totally sucks
Update: (Sat Oct 24) The Speed option is bogus. To test the speed option I put some future and long wait releases in the top 15 in my queue. That still didn’t cause anything to ship on Friday (previous movie returned to store Wednesday, system glitch caused it to be marked as returned on Thurdsay after complaining). And if the limited shipments on Monday is true, I’ll have to wait at least 2, maybe three business days for the next movie to ship.
Update: Somehow my update to this post got lost? I got a call from BB customer service on Oct 26/27 after complaining about this problem on Twitter. It seems that the speed issue is now fixed. Since then I’ve seen my movies ship on time until now. So if you see no more updates to this BB has fixed the issue.
Here are trailers for movies coming soon that I want to see. I’ll wait for them to come on DVD/BluRay but for moviegoers, here are a lot of trailers in one place.
The Box
The Fourth Kind
The Men Who Stare at Goats
2012
Planet 51
Twilight: New Moon
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Old Dogs
Transylmania
Avatar (Teaser Trailer)
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Sherlock Holmes
I’ll keep making more posts with more trailers as the weeks go by. Until then enjoy 
I only watch the movie. I don’t watch bonus features, commentaries etc. at all so my reviews will not contain anything about those.
The disc directly went to the movie menu, didn’t force any trailers on me. The special features were on a second disc.
The movie was very good but not as good as the first one. It was exactly what you expect lots of robots, explosions, action etc. The CGI is great and looks fantastic on Blu-Ray. There is always so much happening on the screen that even if there were any CGI flaws you wouldn’t notice them.
The movie was 2 hours 26 minutes approx which was a bit much. They could have skipped or at the minimum skimped on the romance. Don’t go looking for plot holes, great acting or some such. That’s not what the movie is about. Just enjoy the action and the great effects. I really liked the effects during the little slow motion action thrown in. A transformer taking human form was a bad idea.
I rented the disc from Blockbuster and it included an ad for GM cars, but it contained none of the Transformers cars except the Camaro. Which is a shame. GM took a really long time to launch the Camaro after the first transformers movie and it seems will not be launching the Trax. The Spark comes in 2011 to America. The Trax and The Spark are the autobot twins. The Corvette Stingray that looks so much better than the current corvette will also probably never hit the market. GM, what is wrong with you? Maybe next time you can have the cars at the dealer lots the day the next Transformers comes out and handout fliers at the theater along with tickets to go check out the cars.
Anyway, the countdown to Transformers 3, which comes out July, 2011 is now on.
Click here to watch in 1080P (requires Quicktime)
