Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[pmcd9]

but I'm willing to take the hammer for the additional functionality

Yeah, but that's the thing, sometimes they update to remove functionality.  Also, Nabu is right.  Itunes is the worst at this.

[theinevitable]

Maybe they assume the kind of people who refuse to update their browsers will also complain about Google+.

[jay-ell]

2. I can remember one time, ever, that I had the sort of problems you guys are describing. How did you even update computer software before high-speed internet?

Rarely, and over dialup. Because of this, updates were almost never forced.

I am with Nabu and Wombles here. If someone is using software that is, like, six years old, it probably needs updating. But if you're using a version of Firefox that came out less than a year ago and you have chosen not to update it until they get the bugs out of the new version, you should not be forced to run an update to see a web site. It should be at least a little backwards-compatible.

I use Chrome* anyway, so it's not a thing for me.

_{*which updates automatically in the background without bothering me, this is how software should work.}

[jaydub]

well, maybe software updates have improved a lot in the last 23 years. Do you avoid hairdressers ever since that one time they accidentally gave you Flock of Seagulls hair?

Please, let someone have a photo of Wombat with Flock of Seagulls hait!

[theinevitable]

I don't want to call you, you're just going to be a dick to me because my experience of something is different from yours.

[Choop]

this thread is a bag of dicks.

chrome updates the way software should update. firefox gets just about all of it wrong. oracle and windows and osx and itunes (oh god especially fuck*ng itunes) are completely different behemoths and morasses of terrible coding and worse update processes. everybody with twisted panties should take a step back and unknot.

look i write software for a living and i can pretty comfortably say ALL SOFTWARE SUCKS. everything is a piece of shit that works wrong when it works at all. i tell people i convert caffeine to error messages. wrangling a million use cases on a billion hardware configurations to make a single product that does everything right according to everybody is a literal impossibility.

you go and use the software that works best for you, imma go do the same for me. i'm just not gonna take part in the everloving dickitude this thread seems to have inspired in more than the usual number of contenders.

[greenkoolayd]

let's hug it out, guys.

[theinevitable]

you go and use the software that works best for you, imma go do the same for me.

When did I ever say the opposite of this? Use freaking Netscape if you want. But don't be surprised when a website that came out a week ago doesn't support your out-of-date browser. Especially when until a few days ago they were only letting a few people in to test it out. When I try to do something and it tells me I need to update my browser to do it, I update my browser. This has never caused a problem for me. If your experience is different, then, our experiences are different. This does not mean I am a fuckwit who doesn't know my ass from a hole in the ground, this doesn't mean I'm lying to you, this doesn't mean I'm being a dick. I also hate reading mystery novels, but when you say you like them I don't accuse you of lying or trying to trick me like LFM with that whole soccer thing.

Also: my solution to Wombat's problem would be to copy-paste a unique phrase from the huge one-page archive, update, and use ctrl-F to find it. This only works with normal text, not scanned images text or anything, though.

final pun: you guys think it is googleplus ungood.

[wombat]

Also: my solution to Wombat's problem would be to copy-paste a unique phrase from the huge one-page archive, update, and use ctrl-F to find it. This only works with normal text, not scanned images text or anything, though.

Doesn't work when the archive only loads a chunk at a time.  This thing couldn't be set up more idiotically if they had done it on purpose.

[CortJstr]

I use Chrome* anyway, so it's not a thing for me.

_{*which updates automatically in the background without bothering me, this is how software should work.}

FF now works this way, too. Well, it has an option to do so, and a sub-option that will warn if an update will bork any extensions.

I've noticed the people who bitch about Twitter the most are the ones who should be on it most (i.e. people who update their FB statuses like 4 times a day with random thoughts). As we discover G+'s ideal use I'm sure I'll find that people who bash it the most turn out to be the same way.

[Doc]

I know there's way more than two points of view going on here but stuff like this:

*which updates automatically in the background without bothering me, this is how software should work.

Is kind of funny because there's no reason that an invisible update will be less problem-causing than an update you install yourself, so maybe we just don't want to feel like we're idiots for causing the program to break by installing the update. In the chrome case they probably cause less problems because the invisible update thing allows google to iterate and fix problems way faster than most places would but my impression is that that's a corporate philosophy as much as anything technical.

I've had updates cause fuck ups in games all the time but can't remember it ever happening in a useful program, particularly I can't remember a web browser. My update philosophy is either I'll stay right on the edge of newness for stuff where I'm getting material from other people (browsers etc) and never update stuff I'm just using on my own like word processors and most other work applications. I have way more problems migrating between programs, microsoft to star office or open office or whatever than I do upgrading within programs.

[Victoria Waterfield]

So I'm still rather pissed off (in a purely existential sense, mind you) that I can no longer use the skills I have accumulated in using the Icon Computer that the Ontario government so thoughtfully provided us back in the 80's. Seriously what do I have to do to play Refugees in the Wilderness again (this is more or less the Canadian version of Oregon Trail, where instead of being a pioneer on the Oregon Trail, you are a Loyalist fleeing the American Revolution starting your life anew in Ontario. The one thing I remember is that if you make nice with the Iroquois they will share their giraffe with you.)

But the basic point is that I remember when it was a big deal when my school got the school district's travelling computers for a whole damn week back in 1985 or so, and the fact that that scarcity no longer exists, instead of making me enjoy the future, just makes me hate the young people.

[jay-ell]

Victoria once again reminds us what's important in life. Pure gold.

Back on topic, I suppose, I invited Wombat to Google+ today because we were talking about her, and it only seemed fair. (I also shared the post with you via e-mail, wombles, so you don't have to sign up for an account to follow it unless you want to.)

[Nabubrush]

I think I will stand by on this for the time being.

I normally don't have a thing where the software doesn't work anymore. The thing that happens to me often (or at least my memory says it does) is the software doesn't have the functionality I came to depend on. That's pretty annoying.

[smick]

This thread solves a mystery:  Hello people who were adding me on Google+.