The same people (perhaps) who are decrying the RIAA as scum of the earth for pursuing piracy* are crying foul when their beloved fringe blogger has all her ads blocked. Boo frickin' hoo!
People seem to forget that Freedom of Speech is inseparable with the Freedom to Ignore Speech.
* Yes, I realize that's not the only reason the RIAA are scum.
One of the main reasons Windows has so many problems is the legacy issue. Windows is bound to almost every stupid design decision they've made since Windows 3. Now in 2005, whether this is their fault or not (it is) isn't relevant. From here on out, if fixing things breaks compatibility, I say, fix the thing. The biggest lagacy problem is that a lot of old apps were written very poorly and did not comply with the "official" way of doing things (using undocumented features, etc). Of course, in the old days, using undocumented features was inevitable, but nonetheless, those apps are prone to break. It's bad enough to have to support your own mistakes, but how far do you need to go to support everyone else's. As much as I bash MS, and they deserve it, I think they've usually struck a reasonable balance in most cases of maintaining compatibility with old stuff while moving ahead. With things like VirtualPC and VMWare compatibility with old apps is almost a moot point.
Office is no longer supported for 95/98/ME. I'm not surprised and I don't blame them for making that decision. 95/98/ME was complete crap, and now that it's a dead product, it's in MS's best interests to just drop it and move on. Sure some people will be ticked off, but the majority of us will benefit.
Now when they drop Windows 2000, that'll be a different matter. Now MS will be a victim of their success. People keep using Windows 2000 because it's actually pretty good.
Yeah, and if you get up to take a leak during a TV commercial YOU ARE STEALING. If you dump all those little cards from your magazine YOU ARE A THIEF. If you skip by all the full page ads for ladies' underwear in the newspaper, YOU ARE VILE SCUM RIPPING OFF HARD WORKING AMERICANS GO BACK TO CHINA YOU COMMIE!*&*&@^#*&#^$.
Get real. The idea behind advertsing is that it comes with the product. There is no requirement that you read it, and even if you did, there is no requirement that you respond to it. They are gambling that enough people will be affected positively by the ads that the increased revenue will offset the cost of delivering content. If it's being selfish and harmful to skip ads, it seems like you would think it should be illegal. Advertisements are enticement. If they don't entice, then it is the fault of the advertiser, not the customer.
Like I said before, if the content providers don't like me skipping their ads, then they can charge me for the site. No one is forcing them to "give away" their content. Why do you think they continue to do it, though? Out of the goodness of their hearts?
You see, it's called capitalism and it works both ways. If you can't stand the heat...
Yeah. They did that kind of thing to Dan Quayle on a daily basis for years, but do it once to Gore, and they're all crybaby about it. Oh, the humanity!
Well, it's just like TV. The more they annoy me, the more effort I will make to remove the annoyance. If they don't annoy me, I won't bother, and... get this... I'm likely to actually view the ad. I do not, however, like to trade annoyance for content. Plus, it's not like annoying ads are making sales to me anyway. If anything, I will make it a point to avoid the product.
In summary: "Social contract" my ass.
I reserve the right to block ads. If they don't like it, they can charge me for the site. If it's worth it to me, I'll pay. If it's not, it's their loss.
Maybe they can follow my social contract: Don't make ads that cause epileptic seizures and bleeding ears and I won't be inclined to block them. How's that for a social contract?
Yet they managed to make a 700MB installation file out of it!
Now given that this is a sophisticated server backup tool that supports SQL Server, Windows 2003 Server and all kind of other stuff, I'm sure it's a bit more than just "xcopy..." (of course, I use "robocopy/MIR" myself), but 700 MB?!
> Or is it late and I'm missing something obvious?
It seems to me that the ugly bugs are more likely to have ugly offspring, causing ugliness to become a more dominant trait over time throughout the species?
Their DNA is different in as much as they have more ugly genes than those bugs that got eaten. Now expand these changes geometrically over thousands and millions of years and you eventually get Adam Sandler. I guess.
Because the Web offers a far more restictive set of functionality, primary focused around reading documents.
Just like a car is easier to use than an airplane. Almost anyone can drive a car. Flying a plane takes a significant investment in training and study.
The Web is easy to use because, for the most part, it only has butt-simple functionality. For what it does, what functionality is largely sufficient, but for full-blown app development it is hopelessly limited.
I don't know, but in 10 years, the only improvement they've made has been to change the progress bar to show the progress of the whole transfer rather than each file... and it was a long time before the time estimate was anywhere approaching accurate. I remember the NT 4.0 days where it would say 15 seconds for 10 minutes. In fact, sometimes it still does that.
And in 10 years, you would think someone would take an hour to fix the thing so that when a long copy fails, it doesn't just throw up its hands and say "Screw You!", but allows you to retry, after making space on the disk or whatever.
But no, minor improvements like this are apparently beyond MS's desire... or skill. Explorer locks up on me on almost a daily basis. It sucked in Windows 95 and 10 years later it still sucks. Rather than writing 800 million lines of code for Dot Net, which is so complicated no one can even explain what it is, why not just fix the simple usability problems we've been plagued with since the DOS days.
But improving your product doesn't further your monopoly, unless you can use those improvements to force upgrades... I guess.
Before MMC, all the system stuff was scattered all over the place in an inconsistent and confusing way.
With MMC, it's the same, just harder to navigate. I agree with you that it's just plain horrible. It's seems that MS just can't be bothered with a lot of things.
And with 40 billion dollars and thousands of supposedly smart people working absurd hours, you would think someone at MS would have figured out by now that message boxes that ask Yes/No questions should not have "OK" and "Cancel" as the only choices.
As an application platform, it sucks big green minimize buttons. Unfortunately, a lot of apps are deployed on the Web for obvious reasons. MS tried to mitigate this lack of real app development with ActiveX, other people offered real solutions like Java and PHP. None of them however come within the same time zone as a native GUI app for ease of use and good looks. Face it, even Java is still ugly.
The nightmarish part is the a lot of GUI developers (e.g., Symantec, curse their UI people) suddenly thought this backwards hodge-podge of a paradigm was a good idea for real GUI apps. Standards have been thrown out in favor of questionable (and in some cases horrible) "innovation" along with pretty pictures that do nothing but obfuscate the user interface.
The web has helped set UI development back 15 years (better graphics and faster machines have done the rest, at least in the Windows world). Something like Archy would eventually encompass the web as part of the data you can work with.
No doubt you are correct, but I don't think we are necessarily freer than before. I think we've exchange one set of problems with another.
Sure, blacks aren't being lynched, and women can vote, etc, as it should be. But people continue to be harassed for expressing their beliefs. Taxes and bureaucracy eat a huge chunk of our national productivity. The fear of lawsuits pervades almost every aspect of life. Extortion for settlements is easy because people don't trust the courts. Special interest groups have warped political discussion into a funhouse of deceit, innuendo and fear tactics.
Yeah, it's better for many, but also in many ways, worse for all of us.
>people making fun of the UN's use of technology as a diversion from the associated goal of feeding the hungry
You're right, we shouldn't make fun of the laudable goal of feeding the humgry... even if it's only a diversion from the associated goal of Oil for Food kickbacks.
Another triumph of the American (Dis)Education System!
It's long been shown that the average American citizen, when shown a list of the rights spelled out in the Bill of Rights is likely to be shocked at the idea and state that many of those rights shouldn't exist.
While I'm sure the poll question biased the result, what part of "Freedom of the Press" do people not understand?
Jeez! No wonder Congress, the Judiciary and the Presidents can get away with treating the Constitution as if it doesn't exist, most of the population doesn't even understand what's in it.
Bloggers should not be censored. Period. But when they harass people, spread lies or otherwise behave in a way that is provably harmful (slander, etc.), then they should be held accountable and prosecuted with impunity. People used to understand this concept. This country used to be based on this concept.
Once upon a time, there used to be a concept that you were free to do what you want unless and until you violate someone else's rights. Now, it seems we are heading towards a country where you're only free to do what the government specifically allows you, because some people will abuse those freedoms.
Slashdot Mirror
Try again, chump.
Read my other posts. If the sites can't make money because people are blocking ads, then they need to try something else. It's called a free market.
Maybe you'll learn that businesses must compete when you leave middle school.
Yeah, bad example.
But you might want to skip the ads for, say, hair transplants or Bass-o-matics or something. BUT YOU MUST READ THEM ALL! Or you make Baby Jesus cry!
Thank you! You deserve a +5.
The same people (perhaps) who are decrying the RIAA as scum of the earth for pursuing piracy* are crying foul when their beloved fringe blogger has all her ads blocked. Boo frickin' hoo!
People seem to forget that Freedom of Speech is inseparable with the Freedom to Ignore Speech.
* Yes, I realize that's not the only reason the RIAA are scum.
One of the main reasons Windows has so many problems is the legacy issue. Windows is bound to almost every stupid design decision they've made since Windows 3. Now in 2005, whether this is their fault or not (it is) isn't relevant. From here on out, if fixing things breaks compatibility, I say, fix the thing. The biggest lagacy problem is that a lot of old apps were written very poorly and did not comply with the "official" way of doing things (using undocumented features, etc). Of course, in the old days, using undocumented features was inevitable, but nonetheless, those apps are prone to break. It's bad enough to have to support your own mistakes, but how far do you need to go to support everyone else's. As much as I bash MS, and they deserve it, I think they've usually struck a reasonable balance in most cases of maintaining compatibility with old stuff while moving ahead. With things like VirtualPC and VMWare compatibility with old apps is almost a moot point.
Office is no longer supported for 95/98/ME. I'm not surprised and I don't blame them for making that decision. 95/98/ME was complete crap, and now that it's a dead product, it's in MS's best interests to just drop it and move on. Sure some people will be ticked off, but the majority of us will benefit.
Now when they drop Windows 2000, that'll be a different matter. Now MS will be a victim of their success. People keep using Windows 2000 because it's actually pretty good.
Yeah, and if you get up to take a leak during a TV commercial YOU ARE STEALING. If you dump all those little cards from your magazine YOU ARE A THIEF. If you skip by all the full page ads for ladies' underwear in the newspaper, YOU ARE VILE SCUM RIPPING OFF HARD WORKING AMERICANS GO BACK TO CHINA YOU COMMIE!*&*&@^#*&#^$.
Get real. The idea behind advertsing is that it comes with the product. There is no requirement that you read it, and even if you did, there is no requirement that you respond to it. They are gambling that enough people will be affected positively by the ads that the increased revenue will offset the cost of delivering content. If it's being selfish and harmful to skip ads, it seems like you would think it should be illegal. Advertisements are enticement. If they don't entice, then it is the fault of the advertiser, not the customer.
Like I said before, if the content providers don't like me skipping their ads, then they can charge me for the site. No one is forcing them to "give away" their content. Why do you think they continue to do it, though? Out of the goodness of their hearts?
You see, it's called capitalism and it works both ways. If you can't stand the heat...
I'm TIRED of these jokes, dammit.
Well then stop making them.
You surely can't think your rant is any less specious than my joke.
Yeah. They did that kind of thing to Dan Quayle on a daily basis for years, but do it once to Gore, and they're all crybaby about it. Oh, the humanity!
Well, it's just like TV. The more they annoy me, the more effort I will make to remove the annoyance. If they don't annoy me, I won't bother, and... get this... I'm likely to actually view the ad. I do not, however, like to trade annoyance for content. Plus, it's not like annoying ads are making sales to me anyway. If anything, I will make it a point to avoid the product.
In summary: "Social contract" my ass.
I reserve the right to block ads. If they don't like it, they can charge me for the site. If it's worth it to me, I'll pay. If it's not, it's their loss.
Maybe they can follow my social contract: Don't make ads that cause epileptic seizures and bleeding ears and I won't be inclined to block them. How's that for a social contract?
Yet they managed to make a 700MB installation file out of it!
..." (of course, I use "robocopy /MIR" myself), but 700 MB?!
Now given that this is a sophisticated server backup tool that supports SQL Server, Windows 2003 Server and all kind of other stuff, I'm sure it's a bit more than just "xcopy
> Or is it late and I'm missing something obvious?
It seems to me that the ugly bugs are more likely to have ugly offspring, causing ugliness to become a more dominant trait over time throughout the species?
Their DNA is different in as much as they have more ugly genes than those bugs that got eaten. Now expand these changes geometrically over thousands and millions of years and you eventually get Adam Sandler. I guess.
Because the Web offers a far more restictive set of functionality, primary focused around reading documents.
Just like a car is easier to use than an airplane. Almost anyone can drive a car. Flying a plane takes a significant investment in training and study.
The Web is easy to use because, for the most part, it only has butt-simple functionality. For what it does, what functionality is largely sufficient, but for full-blown app development it is hopelessly limited.
Who designed that status dialog???
I don't know, but in 10 years, the only improvement they've made has been to change the progress bar to show the progress of the whole transfer rather than each file... and it was a long time before the time estimate was anywhere approaching accurate. I remember the NT 4.0 days where it would say 15 seconds for 10 minutes. In fact, sometimes it still does that.
And in 10 years, you would think someone would take an hour to fix the thing so that when a long copy fails, it doesn't just throw up its hands and say "Screw You!", but allows you to retry, after making space on the disk or whatever.
But no, minor improvements like this are apparently beyond MS's desire... or skill. Explorer locks up on me on almost a daily basis. It sucked in Windows 95 and 10 years later it still sucks. Rather than writing 800 million lines of code for Dot Net, which is so complicated no one can even explain what it is, why not just fix the simple usability problems we've been plagued with since the DOS days.
But improving your product doesn't further your monopoly, unless you can use those improvements to force upgrades... I guess.
Alt-F4 made a whole lot more sense when the function keys were on the left... where God intended them to be.
Before MMC, all the system stuff was scattered all over the place in an inconsistent and confusing way.
With MMC, it's the same, just harder to navigate. I agree with you that it's just plain horrible. It's seems that MS just can't be bothered with a lot of things.
And with 40 billion dollars and thousands of supposedly smart people working absurd hours, you would think someone at MS would have figured out by now that message boxes that ask Yes/No questions should not have "OK" and "Cancel" as the only choices.
Lighten up. It was a joke.
Although I do stand by the statement that the U.N. is horribly corrupt, ineffective and politicized and should be dissolved.
However, the food programs are one of the few things I think it's done well, overall.
For viewing documents? Sure, the web is great.
As an application platform, it sucks big green minimize buttons. Unfortunately, a lot of apps are deployed on the Web for obvious reasons. MS tried to mitigate this lack of real app development with ActiveX, other people offered real solutions like Java and PHP. None of them however come within the same time zone as a native GUI app for ease of use and good looks. Face it, even Java is still ugly.
The nightmarish part is the a lot of GUI developers (e.g., Symantec, curse their UI people) suddenly thought this backwards hodge-podge of a paradigm was a good idea for real GUI apps. Standards have been thrown out in favor of questionable (and in some cases horrible) "innovation" along with pretty pictures that do nothing but obfuscate the user interface.
Bleh!
The web has helped set UI development back 15 years (better graphics and faster machines have done the rest, at least in the Windows world). Something like Archy would eventually encompass the web as part of the data you can work with.
I don't think you're thinking big enough.
Can you say "alpha"?
Expect problems. They are just trying to let you see what it will be able to do.
Since I haven't played Doom in about 10 years, I don't know what the latest gimmicks/bugs/whatever are.
Though I doubt I'll see the movie, knowing that there were a game in-joke or two in it would be very amusing.
s/was/wasn't
For once, "Slow down, cowboy" would have helped me! D'Oh!
Now I have to grow old while I wait to post this correction.
Dum de dum...
Dum de dum...
Dum de dum...
What are these, metric minutes!?
Dum de dum...
Just be glad Marvin was designed and built by Bloody Stupid Johnson or he might be 5 miles tall.
No doubt you are correct, but I don't think we are necessarily freer than before. I think we've exchange one set of problems with another.
Sure, blacks aren't being lynched, and women can vote, etc, as it should be. But people continue to be harassed for expressing their beliefs. Taxes and bureaucracy eat a huge chunk of our national productivity. The fear of lawsuits pervades almost every aspect of life. Extortion for settlements is easy because people don't trust the courts. Special interest groups have warped political discussion into a funhouse of deceit, innuendo and fear tactics.
Yeah, it's better for many, but also in many ways, worse for all of us.
>people making fun of the UN's use of technology as a diversion from the associated goal of feeding the hungry
You're right, we shouldn't make fun of the laudable goal of feeding the humgry... even if it's only a diversion from the associated goal of Oil for Food kickbacks.
I'm sure there will be tons of stereotypical action movie dialog:
"Come get some!"
"You want some of this?"
"How 'bout this?!"
"Eat lead!"
"Avaunt, ye demons! Lest ye taste the wrath of my BFG!"
with the occasional comic relief, such as:
"I'm hit!"
"He's dead!"
"Cover me!"
"Hey, he just walked through a wall, that's a clipping bug!"
Another triumph of the American (Dis)Education System!
It's long been shown that the average American citizen, when shown a list of the rights spelled out in the Bill of Rights is likely to be shocked at the idea and state that many of those rights shouldn't exist.
While I'm sure the poll question biased the result, what part of "Freedom of the Press" do people not understand?
Jeez! No wonder Congress, the Judiciary and the Presidents can get away with treating the Constitution as if it doesn't exist, most of the population doesn't even understand what's in it.
Bloggers should not be censored. Period. But when they harass people, spread lies or otherwise behave in a way that is provably harmful (slander, etc.), then they should be held accountable and prosecuted with impunity. People used to understand this concept. This country used to be based on this concept.
Once upon a time, there used to be a concept that you were free to do what you want unless and until you violate someone else's rights. Now, it seems we are heading towards a country where you're only free to do what the government specifically allows you, because some people will abuse those freedoms.
The Nanny State rules! All Hail the Nanny State!