Toonbots message board: the internet zone

Michael Thu Aug 30 14:27:04 2001 Re: the internet zone > michael, have you lured me into some evil interzonic spy network? Yes, and it's good of you to notice. I redecorated just for the occasion.

mouse Thu Aug 30 17:24:59 2001 interzonic spy network thanks - i like the drapes.

Eric Schissel Thu Aug 30 15:01:12 2001 Re: the internet zone > whoa - just posted via internet exploder for the first time ('cause > netscape is being a bit weird today) - and got a message that i was 'about Not the same Netscape weirdness I've been getting by any chance- I try to use WebBBS (i.e., this discussion board) and my computer completely hangs after about 6-20k of the main page of the forum has loaded (which is why I've been using the Mac browser iCab to participate in this forum lately)? Or something else. I've been meaning to ask about that problem (which seems intermittent... but, erm, rather serious.) -Eric Schissel (one of whose computers can't run Internet Explorer anyway, and the other, hrm, hadn't thought of trying that- iCab is my preferred browser when Netscape has a problem, and often when it doesn't.)

mouse Thu Aug 30 17:08:30 2001 Re: the internet zone no - mine does this bit where it refuses to follow any links (which makes reading the forum _really_ difficult). if i shut it down and come back to it later (which can be hours to days), it acts just fine. i've had this happen on both my home and work computers in the past week - which is starting to weird me out.

Michael Thu Aug 30 21:17:26 2001 Re: the internet zone > no - mine does this bit where it refuses to follow any links (which makes > reading the forum _really_ difficult). if i shut it down and come back to > it later (which can be hours to days), it acts just fine. i've had this > happen on both my home and work computers in the past week - which is > starting to weird me out. Oh, that. You've just now noticed that? One of the ad networks (the one, coincidentally, used by Keen and Sluggy Freelance) has code which zaps Netscape. You can fix it by killing Netscape, then doing the three-finger salute to see the list of active tasks. There will be an extra silent Netscape task (which is, I believe, the Javascript engine sitting in a tight loop.) Kill that. Then you're fine. But for about a year now I just use IE to go to Keen. Eric, I'm afraid I have no idea in your case. I use Netscape on my own site, and I've never had this problem. Possibly you're running up against a cache size limitation or something. Try clearing your cache entirely and seeing if it still happens. But really, when you come down to it, on the Mac all bets are off. Most software just doesn't get the serious beating of a testing on that Mac because the user base is so small. With any luck, the new Mac OS (which is Unix inside) will change that -- at least the platform will be something more universal, so core code will be stabler. Good luck, anyway.

Eric Schissel Thu Aug 30 22:44:34 2001 Re: the internet zone > But for about a year now I just use IE to go to Keen. Yep, and I use iCab (though for some reason the latest version of iCab - which uses ECMAScript, not Javascript- understands the banner ads on one of my machines and not the other. D**ned if I do, d**ned if I don't. Bother.) > Eric, I'm afraid I have no idea in your case. I use Netscape on my own > site, and I've never had this problem. Possibly you're running up against > a cache size limitation or something. Try clearing your cache entirely and Well, I tried clearing the cache and raising the cache size from 30-odd megs to 50-odd megs, but it still hung at about 36-k without completely loading. There's a difference in size of about 1000 between 50 megs and 36 k, but I don't know if you're suggesting that inability to cache the output of discuss.pl is the problem, or something else... I confuse easily :( > seeing if it still happens. But really, when you come down to it, on the > Mac all bets are off. Most software just doesn't get the serious beating That's one reason. The Mac (OS 9 and earlier) has other fundamental problems as well, and I say this as a (hopefully non-dogmatic) Mac -fan- ... (ah well.) Some time I hope to get an OS X machine. Probably later than sooner, for various extremely contingent reasons. > of a testing on that Mac because the user base is so small. With any luck, > the new Mac OS (which is Unix inside) will change that -- at least the > platform will be something more universal, so core code will be stabler. To be hoped. (Thankfully the MacPerl developers still intend for the new release- currently in alpha iirc- to be compatible with OS 8 and more recent. I only browse the mailing list, so again I might be wrong about this- might be 9 and more recent, say, or 8.5 and more recent...) -Eric Schissel > Good luck, anyway.

Michael Fri Aug 31 00:48:22 2001 Re: the internet zone > Well, I tried clearing the cache and raising the cache size from 30-odd > megs to 50-odd megs, but it still hung at about 36-k without completely > loading. There's a difference in size of about 1000 between 50 megs and 36 > k, but I don't know if you're suggesting that inability to cache the > output of discuss.pl is the problem, or something else... I confuse easily > :( That's all I could think of. It's pretty simple HTML, no tables or anything to confuse the browser. I don't know why it would hang. Very odd.

Jenn Fri Aug 31 08:18:30 2001 Wow! Michael's so /smart/! Dude! I've had the same problem mouse does for like...oh...8 months? Of course, it didn't occur to me that it might be fixable. I just figured it was something with the hell like configuration BNY puts on their computers, and roughed it out. And now my life is perfect again! Yay! Thanks, Michael, you're my /hero/! And not just cause today's toon made me snort through my nose at work!

Brother Emsworth Sat Sep 1 01:53:55 2001 Re: Wow! Michael's so /smart/! > Thanks, Michael, you're my /hero/! And not just cause today's toon made me > snort through my nose at work! Sudden laughter at Toonbots like purchase of home with high interest installment plan... one pays through the nose.

Chris Sat Sep 1 01:25:03 2001 Re: the internet zone > That's all I could think of. It's pretty simple HTML, no tables or > anything to confuse the browser. I don't know why it would hang. Very odd. Advertisement code like knife -- simple, but quite deadly.

mouse Fri Aug 31 13:45:51 2001 thanks! i never knew that -- altho i have been reading sluggy about 3 years now, and this has been real sporadic - but i was having problems today, shut down netscape, checked task manager/processes (i don't know the three-finger salute - isn't that the boy scouts?) - and sure enough, there were 2 netscape processes there, and none showing under applications. now why do people put nasty things like that in their code? it seems especially stupid for ad network - all they are doing is shutting down potential customers.

Eric Schissel Fri Aug 31 13:54:49 2001 Re: thanks! > i never knew that -- altho i have been reading sluggy about 3 years now, > and this has been real sporadic - but i was having problems today, shut > down netscape, checked task manager/processes (i don't know the > three-finger salute - isn't that the boy scouts?) - and sure enough, there > were 2 netscape processes there, and none showing under applications. > now why do people put nasty things like that in their code? it seems > especially stupid for ad network - all they are doing is shutting down > potential customers. Three-finger-salute- CTRL+ALT+DEL on a PC-compatible. It's not an intentional nasty thing. It generally happens, in my experience, when javascript embedded in a page is looking for something (say, trying to connect to a website, for instance, and that website happens to be down or hard to reach right now- say it contains the ad banner graphic and the URL that clicking on that graphic will go to, for example!) and not finding it. Netscape doesn't handle a stalled javascript gracefully; IE and other browsers I know do, though they have their own problems. This is my own guess as to what's happening, of course, and not the canonical truth!

Michael Fri Aug 31 14:27:14 2001 Re: thanks! > now why do people put nasty things like that in their code? it seems > especially stupid for ad network - all they are doing is shutting down > potential customers. Well, Netscape isn't much of the market nowadays, and the hacks that call themselves programmers in the corporate market are incapable of imagining crossplatform testing. My biggest customer is VerticalNet (they actually *bought* my biggest customer, long story...) -- back when they abortively attempted to "integrate" with the application I admin (it aborted because they collectively couldn't find their technical butt with both metafictional hands) I found that they do have a testing department. On a T-1 with very large new monitors and only the LATEST in software! Wow! And they just ... didn't ... get ... the idea that our target demographic is machine tool users who have 486s from the Dark Ages with Netscape 2.0 on them. And that all the HTML they delivered would look completely crappy on Netscape. When I suggested they actually run Netscape occasionally to see what their designs looked like, they said, in effect, "Hey! That's a pretty good idea!" It had never even occurred to them, and these were people earning good money doing "professional" web design work. Pre-bubble, of course; this was 2000. They're all laid off now, and I'm still admin of the Techspex site. The fact is, mouse, most people in the world are idiots. Surely you've noticed this -- maybe you just thought it was something wrong with *you*. But the reason I only get 50 hits (almost to 60 now) a day to the Toonbots home page is that most people Just Aren't Cool Enough. To like Toonbots *or* to test their software. I'm feeling cynical today. Insufficient sleep. I'm going to stop ranting now.

mouse Fri Aug 31 16:01:37 2001 Re: thanks! > The fact is, mouse, most people in the world are idiots. Surely you've > noticed this -- maybe you just thought it was something wrong with *you*. unfortunately i had (i mean noticed the % of idiots in the world - there is, of course, _nothing_ wrong with me). i still have these unprovoked bouts of optimism that competence eventually rises to the top (apparently i have a bad learning curve on that). i had sorta managed to block out the whole internet-bubble thing -- altho i remember thinking that it sorta proves the rule that there is an inverse relationship between the amount of money you throw at a project, and the amount of intellegent thought that this produces. (this is known as the law of defense department spending). this is why i don't function well in business -- i have all these silly hangups about logical actions and professionalism (which to me means, make sure the job is done _right_). unfortunately this seems to be an old-fashioned idea. i just spent two days going over a graduate student's program for analyzing data that is going into a pretty high-profile paper. i found a couple of severe errors, to which her airy response was 'oh, that was so-and-so's idea, it was kind of last minute, just go ahead and fix it'. i could detect absolutely no concern that she had been about to publish some bad numbers, which would leave the entire paper open to attack. (and this is a paper that is already going out there with a target on it's chest.) apparently she figured the readers would somehow deduce which parts of the paper had been produced by which author, and absolve her of blame for her faulty analysis of what was, after all, someone else's idea. (darn younger generation....grumble, grumble....._never_ happen in my day, growl, snarl...hand me my cane, _i'll_ show those whippersnappers...)