There is a lot of shitty Nerdcore stuff out there, but within the piles of tracks accumulated on these albums as well as other varied sources you'll find a decent number of gems. Just about anything by the Futuristic Sex Robotz, Monzy's few tracks, and a few of MC Plus+'s come to mind first. There's also Beefy, Black as Bleech, Ytcracker, Frontalittle Squad, and of course MC's Front and Hawking (which at least sorta counts) for decent tracks.
Though anyone with a good geeky (and sick) sense of humor and a good stereo system needs to have some fun blasting the entirety of Futuristic Sex Robotz' "Hotel Coral Essex" album (free download here) at least once.
I dare you to listen to FSR's Hey Ladies driving through the center of your town with the stereo cranked and windows down.
One problem that I'm running into quite frequently at work with our overloaded and underspecced NAS box, is that our file copies tend to be very high on CPU usage. We have an HP server with RAID 5 configured, and feeding two simultaneous feeds of streaming video over gigabit networking, we use 50% of our resources. This makes things nearly impossible to use when we need to copy in -new- material, while the old is still being sent out for broadcast. Is there any way to specifically lower priority for file copies? Explorer.exe can be set low, but again, there's the reliability and persistence issue to be dealt with.
I have no idea who it is that buys some of those horribly tacky cases you see at Fry's, CompUSA, Newegg, you-name-it. Cases with lots of glowy bits, and lots of windows? Sure, I'll admit I've had a couple of those "bling" cases. But the ones that look like transformers/dragons/aliens/gobots/demons just plain look horrible and usually have a build quality to match.
My last case was a plastic-and-tin knockoff of the Powermac G5 case, which I liked because it had a subtle appearance and had tons of venting. When I realized all the venting was actually causing my heat problems after an Athlon64 upgrade, I went out and got a case that's practically the best design I've yet to see - the Antec P180. If you're looking for a bland case, this is it. But at the same time, if you're looking for cool and quiet? This is -definitely- it.
I bet those blinged-out dragons/demons/etc sound like wind tunnels.
Apple's RAM pricing has always been downright robbery, but yes, in the case of the Mac Pro it's not nearly as bad as it usually is considering that they use FB-DIMMs which still command a pretty hefty premium in general. I recently got one at my workplace, and my boss decided that one gig of RAM wouldnt' be enough, and since Apple claimed to only have the two-gig package in store (in Reno), we wound up getting it with three gigs total for another $700. Far more than I would have wanted to pay, let me tell you that.
I've never had any actual problems with my old G2 10G iPod except for the expected and understandable issue of battery wear. But a couple weeks ago, I dropped $7.50 for an 1800mAh replacement for the built-in 800mAh battery, and haven't had a problem since. I like having second generation gear when I can get it, because the bugs have been worked out of the first generation toys and the big enhancements are usually kept for the third generation of a consumer electronic device. New iPods seem too small to me, and I really like the solid feel my old iPod has to it.
My only bitch with Apple about this whole thing is that they didn't backport some of the functions new iPods have, like on-the-fly playlists. That's -all- I friggin' want. And no, I am not going to run iPodlinux. I actually don't mind buying from iTMS because it gives me what I want at a reasonable price. Until the RIAA screws that up, at least.
Hello! My name is Jason Tomczak. Many people around the world rightly know me as a mild-mannered techie, photographer, writer, and nature-lover. I am an Apple fan and have been fortunate enough to use Mac computers and other Apple products since about 1985.
On October 19, 2005, my life changed due to the unauthorized conduct of others. From that date forward, countless numbers of people around the world were driven to hate me and slander my name, sometimes using foul and threatening language.
Since October 19, 2005, my name has been infamously tied to the iPod Nano "Scratch" Class Action law suit filed against Apple.
What You Don't Know About The Nano Suit The truth is that I never sought out nor did I ever hire David P. Meyer & Associates or Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro to represent me in any case, much less the iPod Nano Class Action suit.
The iPod Nano Class Action law suit was initiated by David P. Meyer & Associates Co. LPA of Columbus, Ohio and their representative firm, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP of Seattle, Washington and filed on October 19, 2005.
David P. Meyer & Associates contacted me, soliciting my opinions and comments about the scratching of my iPod Nano after finding Nano-related blog posts I'd written on my own website, on The Unofficial Apple Weblog and on The MacCast. They informed me that they had received an "overwhelming number of complaints" about the Nano and that they wanted my "insight into the problem". Yes, I answered their communication and told them that I had problems with my iPod Nano, however I clearly told them that they should do their own professional and technological study of the iPod Nano.
I emphasized that I did not have any access to any specific data about the materials used in making the iPod Nano. David P. Meyer & Associates used my personal comments and opinions as the basis of the iPod Nano suit. To my knowledge, there was no actual technical study done on the iPod Nano before the Class Action suit was filed.
Additionally, I told David P. Meyer & Associates that I wanted to remain private, and that my wish for privacy, among other considerations, would preclude me from getting involved in the case.
No Documentation At no time did David P. Meyer & Associates or Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro ever receive any attorney-client agreement form from me. On their own time and based on their own schedules and plans, they prepared the paperwork and filed the iPod Nano Class Action suit in California using my name as Lead Plaintiff, however this was done without my knowledge or consent.
The Filing and The Call The senior partner of David P. Meyer & Associates and one of his representatives called me during the afternoon of October 21, 2005 to urgently request my signature on an attorney-client agreement - two days after the Class Action suit was filed; two days after they began their action against Apple; two days after the press had begun running the story. They then warned me that my family, friends, clients and I should expect to hear from the media and others interested in the iPod Nano Class Action suit.
During that phone call to me, David P. Meyer and his associate blamed the faulty Nano filing on Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro.
Spin Cycle During that week and the following months, my name was posted in relation to the iPod Nano Class Action suit on websites all over the world, even in foreign publications like Russia's "Pravda" newspaper, the Enquirer, Stuff Magazine, Popular Mechanics, CNN, BusinessWeek, MTV, VH1, etc.
Google results for my name skyrocketed. I began getting hate mail from people upset about the iPod Nano suit. I had to take my website down and remove legitimate references to my name on numerous web services. My fiancee and I were afraid to go outside in our own home town for fear of recognition and reprisal.
Call For Help Given the gravity of the situation I was facing, I had to hire a law firm to protect
I have a similar problem to submitters, but with two small complications - my roommate has the metabolism of a cheetah on crystal meth, so he keeps plenty of regular soda on hand - and I can't drink water in quantities greater than perhaps a half glass at a time, it gives me the most intensely painful stomach acid short of acid reflux if I have water resting in my stomach for any length of time.
I'm in the middle on this gamer divide, personally. I love my home built PC, I love being able to upgrade it whenever I can afford it and feel like it needs something new, and I play lots of games with constantly evolving requirements. I have a lot of fun building my machines (Even stuffing my gear into an Antec P180 case was somewhat fun) and I'm proud of the results I get.
But at the same time, I get almost as much use out of an iMac 350 that sits to the side of my main desktop and provides me all my IM client and SSH service. I love having at least two machines (Said ancient iMac and a Powerbook G4) that I know will typically just -work- when I want them to. I feel comfortable with the OSX interface, and the only reason I don't feel like Windows is a complete damn kludge job is because I've been using it for a third of my life. (Meaning I -know- it's a kludge job, but it just feels 'natural' despite it.)
I really want to slap a 20" iMac x86 on my desktop and be done with it. I really, really do. But I still want to be able to slap a new video card in, at the very least. I think what's going to wind up happening is that I'll be waiting until Apple releases the Pro desktop towers, and see where things go from there. If they're able to take standard PC video cards, I'll be all over that, as soon as the money starts coming in.
Hell, I learned all that shit watching episodes of 'Cops' on Fox.
"Let's see, the guy without the shirt ran through four yards, climbed under three fences, and dodged a rottweiler. Why didn't he just do two yards, pull a gun and shoot the cops and cameraman when they came through the gate after dodging the dog? Well, -duh-."
If this suit wins, regardless of Jack Thompson's idiocy, this country is going to be opened up to lawsuits of just crazy-insane proportions as people try and dodge liability for every goddamn thing under the sun. Someone gets off on murder charges? Civil suit: They learned how to avoid it on CSI. Someone tries to kill his wife by hiring a third party? Uh-oh! Who do they sue next, Law and Order for having a plot like that, or CourtTV for airing things from the Robert Blake trial?
This is retarded bullshit and absolutely nothing else.
Like the developers of the new 24 game that gave the cars chasing you three times the speed and mass your car has. And who somehow decided that when you're crawling around in ducts trying to be quiet about it, that sometimes left means right and vice versa on your movement stick.
Those little glitches last night made me want to pimpslap a developer, so I guess maybe the critics are right and I should just give in and go get a Mac 10 or something.
... is that Google is -not- changing anything on the google.com site. Not a thing. All they're doing is essentially creating a second system, tailored to fit in with Chinese laws. Anyone who wants uncensored information or at least wants to try and get through the Great Firewall of China, is still free to do so just as easily as they were before google.cn.
Google may not be doing what a lot of us would consider "good" in this case, which would be to open an unrestricted portal in China, while still enhancing the experience Chinese users get with Google. But they simply -can't-. It's illegal there, and like it or not, they've got as much right to set the rules for their country as we do ours. If we really cared about it that much, we wouldn't all be using computers that have components made in China. Say you're boycotting Chinese products all you want, but someplace on your motherboard you've most likely got a Chinese part.
What Google decided to do was simply expand their offering, gain some market share, without compromising the primary mission of the company to continue providing "unfiltered" access through the main portal, the one anyone with half a clue will try and use anyhow, once they see the note on google.cn saying that results have been filtered. You could easily make a case for Google actually being actively -good- by pointing out when things are filtered, unlike the local competition, which would be a clear sign to users that they should look elsewhere for good results.
This isn't evil, and if you still feel like it goes against Google's creed, you're being naive. Call or write your congresscritters and tell them you want to see the US put more leverage down on Chinese trade if you feel that strongly about the issue. I'm confident that things will improve there with time, without having to get into international hissy fits or getting all worked up about it.
I'd pick a site that had something to do with naval patrolling. If the island were in US waters, for example, I'd make it the Coast Guard site - so I could get off the fucking island.
That's a good question, actually. I just emailed Google AdWords support to see what the stance on audio in ads is. The use of audio in flash ads (at least, auto-starting and hover-triggered audio) is definitely one of the most vile things to be unleashed on us in years. Now, ads that had relevant audio that played (and stayed under the 50K limit to load) when you explicitly click on it, wouldn't be that bad - though I wouldn't be likely to click on any of them, personally.
Okay, I suppose some people have a little more raccoon in them than... Hey, flashy thing!
Of course, if I could get one of those 1x1 graphics to stay on my machine at all times, it might a a nice way to deal with the dead pixel on my monitor.
You say flash based ads are evil, sure, but just keep in mind that the site you're on now depends on those ads - with even less strict guidelines than Google has in place - to keep operating. The big "Click Here" ad that we see every time we load this page (unless you're adblocked, as some of my lower-spec machines are) is a good example of one that Google would strongly discourage, if not disallow.
If you're that concerned about web browsing stealing your computing cycles for a compile, why do you even leave your browser open at all? Good gods, man. You DO know that computers suitable for web browsing are reallllly cheap, especially used?
Also, I'd point you to the part of Google's guidelines that limits flash ad animation time to three-cycles only, of a max 30 seconds duration, before stopping. This is most likely designed to prevent the kind of CPU-sapping you're talking about.
(Disclaimerish Thing: I have four machines on my desk right now, with a dual-proc server in the corner. Web browsing is pretty manageable for me.)
Flash and image ads in themselves are not evil things. Let me restate that.
Flash and image ads - in themselves - are not evil.
What's evil are the ones that are large sizes, that encroach on the rest of the page, and that are designed to try and subvert your control over either the design of your website or the functionality of your browser. Google has some very interesting guidelines in place to prevent the obnoxious features of flash or image ads from being used through their system.
Images must be under 50K - and this includes Flash ads.
Nothing can extend outside the proscribed space given to the ad.
Text and images need to be clear and distinct.
The user bar offering links back to the site will be provided by Google (probably so they can keep accurate track of the clicks)
Still no links to pop-up spawning pages allowed.
And one of my favorite lines in the list:
"Your ad should not contain universal call-to-action phrases such as 'click here,' 'link here,' 'visit this link,' 'this site is,' or other similar phrases that could apply to any ad, regardless of content."
It seems to me like Google is actually trying to take the evil -out- of flash and image-based ads.
I see lots of obvious things to be worried about, but at the same time, I see a few things that're actually not so bad. If Google were to go this route, the only question is how far they'd go. Could this network simply be a way for Google to slap down enough bandwidth for the "Google Cube" rumors, or would it be a wider-access thing intended for Total Domination? So far, Google hasn't gone evil despite the best efforts of many to try and call them out on it, and as long as there's a way to make any money and not be evil, I'm pretty sure Google would do it long before they'd consider anything else barring a stockholder revolt. (The only thing I can forsee being a true evil-catalyst)
Now on the other hand, with the Telcos getting all bitchy about Google and others using "their pipelines", I've been wondering just how long it might take for someone to start up an "OtherNet" so to speak, restricted to non-commercial use like the old days were. It might be slow, but you -can- get an unlimited-long-distance line and slap modems together, and combine that with a meshed wireless, etc.
It's annoying, but sometimes when a game first hits the shelves you'll see it for $39 or so, and then a week or two later the price will jump up to $49. It's not always the case, but I've had that happen to me with more than a few titles that were trying to make an impact right off the bat - even Half-Life (the original) did this back in '98, and was significantly cheaper on release day.
If they made an N52 for lefties, I'd be in fucking heaven. As it is, I'm having a hard enough time adapting from using a trackball or touchpad to using a mouse as my primary pointer. Fortunately, Razer makes good mice (with questionable drivers, though) that don't have a design that breaks them for lefties, so it's not being an impossible task so far.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't let the insurgency hit you in the ass on the wa... oh.
There is a lot of shitty Nerdcore stuff out there, but within the piles of tracks accumulated on these albums as well as other varied sources you'll find a decent number of gems. Just about anything by the Futuristic Sex Robotz, Monzy's few tracks, and a few of MC Plus+'s come to mind first. There's also Beefy, Black as Bleech, Ytcracker, Frontalittle Squad, and of course MC's Front and Hawking (which at least sorta counts) for decent tracks. Though anyone with a good geeky (and sick) sense of humor and a good stereo system needs to have some fun blasting the entirety of Futuristic Sex Robotz' "Hotel Coral Essex" album (free download here) at least once. I dare you to listen to FSR's Hey Ladies driving through the center of your town with the stereo cranked and windows down.
One problem that I'm running into quite frequently at work with our overloaded and underspecced NAS box, is that our file copies tend to be very high on CPU usage. We have an HP server with RAID 5 configured, and feeding two simultaneous feeds of streaming video over gigabit networking, we use 50% of our resources. This makes things nearly impossible to use when we need to copy in -new- material, while the old is still being sent out for broadcast. Is there any way to specifically lower priority for file copies? Explorer.exe can be set low, but again, there's the reliability and persistence issue to be dealt with.
I have no idea who it is that buys some of those horribly tacky cases you see at Fry's, CompUSA, Newegg, you-name-it. Cases with lots of glowy bits, and lots of windows? Sure, I'll admit I've had a couple of those "bling" cases. But the ones that look like transformers/dragons/aliens/gobots/demons just plain look horrible and usually have a build quality to match.
My last case was a plastic-and-tin knockoff of the Powermac G5 case, which I liked because it had a subtle appearance and had tons of venting. When I realized all the venting was actually causing my heat problems after an Athlon64 upgrade, I went out and got a case that's practically the best design I've yet to see - the Antec P180. If you're looking for a bland case, this is it. But at the same time, if you're looking for cool and quiet? This is -definitely- it.
I bet those blinged-out dragons/demons/etc sound like wind tunnels.
Apple's RAM pricing has always been downright robbery, but yes, in the case of the Mac Pro it's not nearly as bad as it usually is considering that they use FB-DIMMs which still command a pretty hefty premium in general. I recently got one at my workplace, and my boss decided that one gig of RAM wouldnt' be enough, and since Apple claimed to only have the two-gig package in store (in Reno), we wound up getting it with three gigs total for another $700. Far more than I would have wanted to pay, let me tell you that.
But man, does that machine scream.
I've never had any actual problems with my old G2 10G iPod except for the expected and understandable issue of battery wear. But a couple weeks ago, I dropped $7.50 for an 1800mAh replacement for the built-in 800mAh battery, and haven't had a problem since. I like having second generation gear when I can get it, because the bugs have been worked out of the first generation toys and the big enhancements are usually kept for the third generation of a consumer electronic device. New iPods seem too small to me, and I really like the solid feel my old iPod has to it.
My only bitch with Apple about this whole thing is that they didn't backport some of the functions new iPods have, like on-the-fly playlists. That's -all- I friggin' want. And no, I am not going to run iPodlinux. I actually don't mind buying from iTMS because it gives me what I want at a reasonable price. Until the RIAA screws that up, at least.
Dear Mac Community:
Hello! My name is Jason Tomczak. Many people around the world rightly know me as a mild-mannered techie, photographer, writer, and nature-lover. I am an Apple fan and have been fortunate enough to use Mac computers and other Apple products since about 1985.
On October 19, 2005, my life changed due to the unauthorized conduct of others. From that date forward, countless numbers of people around the world were driven to hate me and slander my name, sometimes using foul and threatening language.
Since October 19, 2005, my name has been infamously tied to the iPod Nano "Scratch" Class Action law suit filed against Apple.
What You Don't Know About The Nano Suit
The truth is that I never sought out nor did I ever hire David P. Meyer & Associates or Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro to represent me in any case, much less the iPod Nano Class Action suit.
The iPod Nano Class Action law suit was initiated by David P. Meyer & Associates Co. LPA of Columbus, Ohio and their representative firm, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP of Seattle, Washington and filed on October 19, 2005.
David P. Meyer & Associates contacted me, soliciting my opinions and comments about the scratching of my iPod Nano after finding Nano-related blog posts I'd written on my own website, on The Unofficial Apple Weblog and on The MacCast. They informed me that they had received an "overwhelming number of complaints" about the Nano and that they wanted my "insight into the problem". Yes, I answered their communication and told them that I had problems with my iPod Nano, however I clearly told them that they should do their own professional and technological study of the iPod Nano.
I emphasized that I did not have any access to any specific data about the materials used in making the iPod Nano. David P. Meyer & Associates used my personal comments and opinions as the basis of the iPod Nano suit. To my knowledge, there was no actual technical study done on the iPod Nano before the Class Action suit was filed.
Additionally, I told David P. Meyer & Associates that I wanted to remain private, and that my wish for privacy, among other considerations, would preclude me from getting involved in the case.
No Documentation
At no time did David P. Meyer & Associates or Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro ever receive any attorney-client agreement form from me. On their own time and based on their own schedules and plans, they prepared the paperwork and filed the iPod Nano Class Action suit in California using my name as Lead Plaintiff, however this was done without my knowledge or consent.
The Filing and The Call
The senior partner of David P. Meyer & Associates and one of his representatives called me during the afternoon of October 21, 2005 to urgently request my signature on an attorney-client agreement - two days after the Class Action suit was filed; two days after they began their action against Apple; two days after the press had begun running the story. They then warned me that my family, friends, clients and I should expect to hear from the media and others interested in the iPod Nano Class Action suit.
During that phone call to me, David P. Meyer and his associate blamed the faulty Nano filing on Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro.
Spin Cycle
During that week and the following months, my name was posted in relation to the iPod Nano Class Action suit on websites all over the world, even in foreign publications like Russia's "Pravda" newspaper, the Enquirer, Stuff Magazine, Popular Mechanics, CNN, BusinessWeek, MTV, VH1, etc.
Google results for my name skyrocketed. I began getting hate mail from people upset about the iPod Nano suit. I had to take my website down and remove legitimate references to my name on numerous web services. My fiancee and I were afraid to go outside in our own home town for fear of recognition and reprisal.
Call For Help
Given the gravity of the situation I was facing, I had to hire a law firm to protect
I can understand banning VOIP. Not that everybody's going to like it, but it's at least rational.
About as rational and popular as the idea of banning the insertion of Music CDs into PC cd-rom drives.
They're in the business of providing telephone service, after all.
So? That's like saying Home Depot should be allowed to ban you from using the tools it sells to build things it sells assembled
Welcome to Slashdot, where we put the anal in analogy!
I have a similar problem to submitters, but with two small complications - my roommate has the metabolism of a cheetah on crystal meth, so he keeps plenty of regular soda on hand - and I can't drink water in quantities greater than perhaps a half glass at a time, it gives me the most intensely painful stomach acid short of acid reflux if I have water resting in my stomach for any length of time.
I'm in the middle on this gamer divide, personally. I love my home built PC, I love being able to upgrade it whenever I can afford it and feel like it needs something new, and I play lots of games with constantly evolving requirements. I have a lot of fun building my machines (Even stuffing my gear into an Antec P180 case was somewhat fun) and I'm proud of the results I get.
But at the same time, I get almost as much use out of an iMac 350 that sits to the side of my main desktop and provides me all my IM client and SSH service. I love having at least two machines (Said ancient iMac and a Powerbook G4) that I know will typically just -work- when I want them to. I feel comfortable with the OSX interface, and the only reason I don't feel like Windows is a complete damn kludge job is because I've been using it for a third of my life. (Meaning I -know- it's a kludge job, but it just feels 'natural' despite it.)
I really want to slap a 20" iMac x86 on my desktop and be done with it. I really, really do. But I still want to be able to slap a new video card in, at the very least. I think what's going to wind up happening is that I'll be waiting until Apple releases the Pro desktop towers, and see where things go from there. If they're able to take standard PC video cards, I'll be all over that, as soon as the money starts coming in.
Hell, I learned all that shit watching episodes of 'Cops' on Fox.
"Let's see, the guy without the shirt ran through four yards, climbed under three fences, and dodged a rottweiler. Why didn't he just do two yards, pull a gun and shoot the cops and cameraman when they came through the gate after dodging the dog? Well, -duh-."
If this suit wins, regardless of Jack Thompson's idiocy, this country is going to be opened up to lawsuits of just crazy-insane proportions as people try and dodge liability for every goddamn thing under the sun. Someone gets off on murder charges? Civil suit: They learned how to avoid it on CSI. Someone tries to kill his wife by hiring a third party? Uh-oh! Who do they sue next, Law and Order for having a plot like that, or CourtTV for airing things from the Robert Blake trial?
This is retarded bullshit and absolutely nothing else.
*shrug*
Like the developers of the new 24 game that gave the cars chasing you three times the speed and mass your car has. And who somehow decided that when you're crawling around in ducts trying to be quiet about it, that sometimes left means right and vice versa on your movement stick.
Those little glitches last night made me want to pimpslap a developer, so I guess maybe the critics are right and I should just give in and go get a Mac 10 or something.
... is that Google is -not- changing anything on the google.com site. Not a thing. All they're doing is essentially creating a second system, tailored to fit in with Chinese laws. Anyone who wants uncensored information or at least wants to try and get through the Great Firewall of China, is still free to do so just as easily as they were before google.cn.
Google may not be doing what a lot of us would consider "good" in this case, which would be to open an unrestricted portal in China, while still enhancing the experience Chinese users get with Google. But they simply -can't-. It's illegal there, and like it or not, they've got as much right to set the rules for their country as we do ours. If we really cared about it that much, we wouldn't all be using computers that have components made in China. Say you're boycotting Chinese products all you want, but someplace on your motherboard you've most likely got a Chinese part.
What Google decided to do was simply expand their offering, gain some market share, without compromising the primary mission of the company to continue providing "unfiltered" access through the main portal, the one anyone with half a clue will try and use anyhow, once they see the note on google.cn saying that results have been filtered. You could easily make a case for Google actually being actively -good- by pointing out when things are filtered, unlike the local competition, which would be a clear sign to users that they should look elsewhere for good results.
This isn't evil, and if you still feel like it goes against Google's creed, you're being naive. Call or write your congresscritters and tell them you want to see the US put more leverage down on Chinese trade if you feel that strongly about the issue. I'm confident that things will improve there with time, without having to get into international hissy fits or getting all worked up about it.
And for that matter, never add a /m4m /m4w /w4m to the end of the URL either, or you'll get porn ads.
All this discussion of such things has my brain cooking.
I'd pick a site that had something to do with naval patrolling. If the island were in US waters, for example, I'd make it the Coast Guard site - so I could get off the fucking island.
"Heeeeelp!"
That's a good question, actually. I just emailed Google AdWords support to see what the stance on audio in ads is. The use of audio in flash ads (at least, auto-starting and hover-triggered audio) is definitely one of the most vile things to be unleashed on us in years. Now, ads that had relevant audio that played (and stayed under the 50K limit to load) when you explicitly click on it, wouldn't be that bad - though I wouldn't be likely to click on any of them, personally.
Okay, I suppose some people have a little more raccoon in them than... Hey, flashy thing!
Of course, if I could get one of those 1x1 graphics to stay on my machine at all times, it might a a nice way to deal with the dead pixel on my monitor.
You say flash based ads are evil, sure, but just keep in mind that the site you're on now depends on those ads - with even less strict guidelines than Google has in place - to keep operating. The big "Click Here" ad that we see every time we load this page (unless you're adblocked, as some of my lower-spec machines are) is a good example of one that Google would strongly discourage, if not disallow.
If you're that concerned about web browsing stealing your computing cycles for a compile, why do you even leave your browser open at all? Good gods, man. You DO know that computers suitable for web browsing are reallllly cheap, especially used?
Also, I'd point you to the part of Google's guidelines that limits flash ad animation time to three-cycles only, of a max 30 seconds duration, before stopping. This is most likely designed to prevent the kind of CPU-sapping you're talking about.
(Disclaimerish Thing: I have four machines on my desk right now, with a dual-proc server in the corner. Web browsing is pretty manageable for me.)
No, but if they want to hire someone with an Associates that's looking for work and LOVES rumors, I'm willing to entertain job offers.
Flash and image ads - in themselves - are not evil.
What's evil are the ones that are large sizes, that encroach on the rest of the page, and that are designed to try and subvert your control over either the design of your website or the functionality of your browser. Google has some very interesting guidelines in place to prevent the obnoxious features of flash or image ads from being used through their system.
Images must be under 50K - and this includes Flash ads.
Nothing can extend outside the proscribed space given to the ad.
Text and images need to be clear and distinct.
The user bar offering links back to the site will be provided by Google (probably so they can keep accurate track of the clicks)
Still no links to pop-up spawning pages allowed.
And one of my favorite lines in the list:
"Your ad should not contain universal call-to-action phrases such as 'click here,' 'link here,' 'visit this link,' 'this site is,' or other similar phrases that could apply to any ad, regardless of content."
It seems to me like Google is actually trying to take the evil -out- of flash and image-based ads.
I see lots of obvious things to be worried about, but at the same time, I see a few things that're actually not so bad. If Google were to go this route, the only question is how far they'd go. Could this network simply be a way for Google to slap down enough bandwidth for the "Google Cube" rumors, or would it be a wider-access thing intended for Total Domination? So far, Google hasn't gone evil despite the best efforts of many to try and call them out on it, and as long as there's a way to make any money and not be evil, I'm pretty sure Google would do it long before they'd consider anything else barring a stockholder revolt. (The only thing I can forsee being a true evil-catalyst)
Now on the other hand, with the Telcos getting all bitchy about Google and others using "their pipelines", I've been wondering just how long it might take for someone to start up an "OtherNet" so to speak, restricted to non-commercial use like the old days were. It might be slow, but you -can- get an unlimited-long-distance line and slap modems together, and combine that with a meshed wireless, etc.
It's annoying, but sometimes when a game first hits the shelves you'll see it for $39 or so, and then a week or two later the price will jump up to $49. It's not always the case, but I've had that happen to me with more than a few titles that were trying to make an impact right off the bat - even Half-Life (the original) did this back in '98, and was significantly cheaper on release day.
If they made an N52 for lefties, I'd be in fucking heaven. As it is, I'm having a hard enough time adapting from using a trackball or touchpad to using a mouse as my primary pointer. Fortunately, Razer makes good mice (with questionable drivers, though) that don't have a design that breaks them for lefties, so it's not being an impossible task so far.