You got an insightful for basically trashing every single popular artist out there... now THAT is just plain silly. TLC has more then enough proof to show their manager screwed them over (they've done so many interviews with news and other shows it's ridiculous)...
Anyways, I dunno why I'm even responding to your flamebait/troll comment... ugh.
So, what if, like me and most of my music, I make a copy for my friends who then keep it for, say, 2 months before taping over it with something else... is that illegal? How is that different then me just temporarily lending my own copy whenever they felt like watching it? I personally will never and have never kept any "illegal" stuff I've downloaded/copied for more then a short period of time...
Sharing movies is illegal. If someone shares a movie, they aren't going to buy it. That's money lost for the makers. What's wrong with crime prevention.
I'll make sure never invite friends over to watch a movie I rented - since I'm sharing the movie with them and all... wouldn't want the multi-billionaires to be harmed by me not forcing my friends to cough up $4 each at Blockbluster...
Uh, if we're hurting individual artists so much, how come artists like TLC, who were once extremely popular, still went bankrupt (this is before Napster of course)? I don't condone theft, but if you can't see that CD sales goes to the managers and NOT the artists in most cases, then you're pretty naive. (Now, if the manager IS the artist, like in many cases, then your case holds up - which is why I always buy the CDs of indepedents and other artists). Check out the dozens of wonderfully written articles on Salon (several well written ones by Courtney Love, to have my point proven).
The difference is, I guess, when Stratavarious (proper spelling) violins were made, there weren't any Big Bad Corporations... but now that we have corporations making toys like the Cue Cat, we can't "hack" anymore, for fear of lawsuits and such... (view the latest Apple lawsuit as a good example). Quite silly. Things progressed thanks to these 'old time hackers'... now they only progress with money I guess.
Well, you have to remember, there's more then one kind of 'hacker'. First, there's the ones that snoop around and tell us that, indeed, yes, Windows 2000 has a bunch of security holes that need to be addressed. (Who says they HAVE to be snooping on someone elses computer, by the way?) Second, there's the ones that do the same time of snooping, then exploit those holes for their own purposes (the ones we -should- be scared about). There's also the 'hacker' who takes things apart to learn about them for their own knowledge and/or does things seemingly impossible (ie, beetle bug on a roof, gets a business tower's room lights to spell a word, etc.). We neededn't be word about two of these types of hackers, so by you saying that all hackers are bad and that they all cost billions of dollars, well, you're just wrong.
Hackers are the people who put the internet together, they are not the ones who are going to take it apart.
I VC with my friends and family all the time... It takes me 3 rings at most to answer the call (it stops ringing after that anyhow and tells them I'm not around)... where did you get this 20 rings thing from?
I think having EA's deeper pockets allowed RG to try dumb things.
Well, considering it took Ultima VII 1 million dollars to make, I'm not sure exactly where you're coming from. With one million dollars, even today, you'd be able to make any game you'd want... Are you saying RG purposely abused EA's money to create games that he wasn't sure would stick?
If a store selling purple lingery goes out of business, do you blame the owner or might it just be the fact that nobody was buying anymore? He spent a million dollars on a game, and, unfortunately, the major RPG rut was already beginning... is it his fault the number of games sold wasn't as high as expected? I agree that he's to blame for some things, since he WAS in charge, but sometimes outside influences play a much more important role.
Considering how easy it was to turn off / not install, not sure what the problem was for us techies... I sure know that my non-techie sister and mother loved it a lot - amazingly, they felt they needed it when doing things like writing formal letters and such when they couldn't remember silly things like where to place the addresses (right aligned or left aligned, yours or theirs on top, etc.). As already said, it was a good idea, just wasn't used to the best of its potential (and no, popping up more often would not have been the ideal solution - may having more knowledge on official document layouts and such would have been good for people doing resumes and such (but don't know about the pre-made document styles available to them).
Don't you find it at all concidental that when EA did finally step in, the Ultima games became the worst they have ever been? Once they step in, we get the 'abortion' Ultima 8 and totally disgusting Ultmia 9 (which I'm sadly currently playing, just so I can finally say I beat them all, ugh).
I've never had any major problems with any of the older Ultimas. Sure, there was stuff like the 'lose keys' bug in Ultima 9, but considering the scope of the game, that's understandable - but there has been nothing even close to as nasty as what I'm up against in U9...
Why do you blame RG for bankrupting Origin? Many/most people consider U7 to be the best Ultima, so obviously he didn't do that much wrong - if it's sales, then how is it RG's fault? Was he supposed to consult the gypsy or something before letting it out the door? And do you have proof that it's RG that decided to make U8 the way it was and not some marketing droid? And you complain that U6 shipped buggy - uh, what game doesn't? Sure, it's a damn shame we have to put up with it, by why blame RG? Even your venerable Spector ships buggy games... (not that he didn't do work on U6 and U7-p2 anyhow, both buggy). My god, actually, every game he made has bugs, wow! Thief crashed on me quite a bit...
Anyhoo, you don't seem to have much proof anywhere that RG "drove Origin into the ground"... (and you seem very upset with him for some reason, attacking him personally by calling him unvirtuous... what did he ever do to you?)
"I have lived no cloistered life and hold in contempt the wise man who has not lived and the scholar who will not share. There have been many wiser men than I, but few have traveled as much road. I have seen life from the top down and the bottom up. I know how it looks both ways. And I know there is wisdom and that there is hope."
L. Ron Hubbard
So, uh, wouldn't he hold himself in contempt for hot sharing (being a "scholar" and all)? (of course, he's dead, but you'd think the "religion" would follow His words...
Er, it's *NSync, actually... even though I'd never correct someone on the spelling of probably the worst band right now... wait, I just correct you... nooooooooooooo.......
A badly translated Sega PC Engine game called Zero Wing... someone gave a link to a Flash movie with excellent dubbed voice actors... But anyway, considering the joke's over a month old (and Slashdot's just catching on), you can basically say it's an old joke that's lost its charm.
Right now, I'm able to go to a local arcade and play Unreal Tournament and a few other "arcade" games on a T1 connection to the internet for a certain amount of time per dollar (not that I'd spend that money)... What's the difference between that and what Sony plans (except for the obvious in using the PlayStation.. a lesser machine anyhow)?
*shrug* Nothing to see here, move along, move along...
I dunno about the text, but as for tables, as a designer, I'm forced sometimes by clients to make sure that nothing goes past a certain limit (since they believe their own clients are on PDA, 640x480 monitors, etc.).. yes, of course there are ways to stretch things, but sometimes some clients (for example, the Canadian government) does not allow even that... accessibility is king it would seem.
Thought I'd like to add that I'm responding to this post using a Pentium 133, running IE 5.5... Considering I saw the same speed computer being sold for $50 in the paper, there's no reason why we should support anything less then that... (I also have the latest Mozilla running too... although not NS6, since I can't even install it for some reason).
First, your site is called Bangable, rate chicks and stuff... your clientel might not be into donating money. Second, your site is a ripoff of so many other sites... (there's event a rate the Rating Sites site out there!). Third, why would I donate to you? What do you offer me exactly? I could easily take my $1 and give it to something more charitable, or at the very least, a site that interests me on a daily basis and keeps me informed/smiling/whatever. Rating sites just plain don't do it.
Considering this keeps happening (including how another Romanian script kiddy did this to Undernet in 1997... this isn't just an isolated event. What can we ALL do? Or should we even care anymore, and just let IRC fall once and for all?
I'd chat with you more on this, but I can't seem to find any stable EFNet server...
Too true... that's beyond my work as a simple designer for individual departments, but I do know they're spending thousands upon thousands to improve their database/search engine... I hope so.. I still haven't even found the simplest thing on their sites yet... Thing is, CLF isn't just about making things pretty.. it enforces us (designers) to use meta tags and such to make the searching easier... hope it works:-/
Although you already replied to yourself, I feel I should still write some responses...
For example, page layout is specced out down to the exact pixel. We all know that this is bad, and I'm sure PDA users with 140x140 screens will be happy to know that content is NOT ALLOWED TO EXIST IN THE LEFT 150 PIXELS.
Same goes with any other net-enabled thing, like cell phones.... But the it comes down to one thing: do you want to build x-many sites to accomodate every single thing out there or should you at least go for what's going to be used most. Web enabled PDAs and cell-phones (including WebTV, which is is also smaller then 640 pixels) only account for less then 2% of web access (from StatMarket's update last month anyhow)... Is it really worth it? *shrug*
If it's bigger, well, everything after the 640'th pixel is whitespace.
As a designer, this is my biggest beef with the setup... I asked if I could format my pages to stretch with the resolution (not a hard thing to do when we're using all tables), but I was told no... Why?? Considering over 55% of the people out there use 800x600 resolution, that's a lot of wasted space...
Canadian web sites are loaded with tables (for layout purposes only, of course),
What's funny is, they pride themselves on strict adherence to the W3C guidelines, but CSS requires that tables not be used... *shrug*
blank filler GIFs
Inexcusable, considering I created a simple template that meets the guidelines 100% and doesn't need such silliness... lazy prorgramming I guess (although it's more work...)
text as images,
Considering the only font we're aloud to use is Arial, designers are forced to put text with other fonts in an image... bloody annoying, but ever try getting a Mac, Linux and PC looking the exact same thing with Helvetica, Times New Roman and Arial fonts all the same time? Damn tuff...
and things like institutional logos that can't be clicked on (no, you can't click on the Canada "wordmark", you have to click on the bit of text below it that says "Canada Site".
Well, for me, it doesn't say you CAN'T have it clickable... so I made it so... I think most people know to click on logos nowadays...
The CLF also dictates e-mail requirements.
You're right, it's stupid... You can see WHY they thought it up, but still stupid.
Don't get me started about the wonderfully EASY TO REMEMBER bilingual URLs that the CLF requires, nice stuff like www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/clf-upe, www.tbs-sct.gc.ca, etc.
Actually, that's wrong... The guideline says that you can either have a single word that's equal in both languages (justice), the style you mentioned or two domains, one for english and one for french (seperate, but still linked together so people can switch languages)... It's laziness and cheapness that stops people from choosing the third option... it's not the guideline's fault...
I work for a design firm here in Ottawa, Ontario Canada and all of the government (.gc.ca) sites are moving to a singular way of working - dubbed The Common Look and Feel. I'm personally quite happy with it, and not because it's stupidly easy for me to design a department's website using pre-made templates, but because it actually has some sense in it. The Canadian government is (unfortunately) spending untold millions of dollars on changing the sites over to a more accessible format - which is a good thing (of course, the old sites were good enough - why not spend those millions on something a little more useful? Emergency housing in Ottawa has up to a 7 year waiting list, but the department is spending over 500,000 on redesigning their website - excuse me?... er, off topic a bit there...)
Anyways, basically, we're moving to the most accessible sites possible, but still keeping design/looks-and-feel an important part of it... It'll fit in a 640x480 screen with 256 colours, but it'll at least look nice - that's the plan...
(hmm, I want target="_blank" abilities in Slashdot... that'd be nice...;-p )
Just to note, you link to Junk Busters with the.org domain. It should be.com
The website you mentioned clearly states:
- We are a for-profit.com, not a non-profit.org
Many people assume that because we don't charge consumers for our services or software that we must be a non-profit, but we're not. We fund our operations from consulting and services to businesses. We choose work that we think benefits both ethical businesses and consumer privacy.
Slashdot Mirror
You got an insightful for basically trashing every single popular artist out there... now THAT is just plain silly. TLC has more then enough proof to show their manager screwed them over (they've done so many interviews with news and other shows it's ridiculous)...
Anyways, I dunno why I'm even responding to your flamebait/troll comment... ugh.
So, what if, like me and most of my music, I make a copy for my friends who then keep it for, say, 2 months before taping over it with something else... is that illegal? How is that different then me just temporarily lending my own copy whenever they felt like watching it? I personally will never and have never kept any "illegal" stuff I've downloaded/copied for more then a short period of time...
Sharing movies is illegal. If someone shares a movie, they aren't going to buy it. That's money lost for the makers. What's wrong with crime prevention.
I'll make sure never invite friends over to watch a movie I rented - since I'm sharing the movie with them and all... wouldn't want the multi-billionaires to be harmed by me not forcing my friends to cough up $4 each at Blockbluster...
Uh, if we're hurting individual artists so much, how come artists like TLC, who were once extremely popular, still went bankrupt (this is before Napster of course)? I don't condone theft, but if you can't see that CD sales goes to the managers and NOT the artists in most cases, then you're pretty naive. (Now, if the manager IS the artist, like in many cases, then your case holds up - which is why I always buy the CDs of indepedents and other artists). Check out the dozens of wonderfully written articles on Salon (several well written ones by Courtney Love, to have my point proven).
The difference is, I guess, when Stratavarious (proper spelling) violins were made, there weren't any Big Bad Corporations... but now that we have corporations making toys like the Cue Cat, we can't "hack" anymore, for fear of lawsuits and such... (view the latest Apple lawsuit as a good example). Quite silly. Things progressed thanks to these 'old time hackers'... now they only progress with money I guess.
Well, you have to remember, there's more then one kind of 'hacker'. First, there's the ones that snoop around and tell us that, indeed, yes, Windows 2000 has a bunch of security holes that need to be addressed. (Who says they HAVE to be snooping on someone elses computer, by the way?) Second, there's the ones that do the same time of snooping, then exploit those holes for their own purposes (the ones we -should- be scared about). There's also the 'hacker' who takes things apart to learn about them for their own knowledge and/or does things seemingly impossible (ie, beetle bug on a roof, gets a business tower's room lights to spell a word, etc.). We neededn't be word about two of these types of hackers, so by you saying that all hackers are bad and that they all cost billions of dollars, well, you're just wrong.
Hackers are the people who put the internet together, they are not the ones who are going to take it apart.
I VC with my friends and family all the time... It takes me 3 rings at most to answer the call (it stops ringing after that anyhow and tells them I'm not around)... where did you get this 20 rings thing from?
I think having EA's deeper pockets allowed RG to try dumb things.
Well, considering it took Ultima VII 1 million dollars to make, I'm not sure exactly where you're coming from. With one million dollars, even today, you'd be able to make any game you'd want... Are you saying RG purposely abused EA's money to create games that he wasn't sure would stick?
If a store selling purple lingery goes out of business, do you blame the owner or might it just be the fact that nobody was buying anymore? He spent a million dollars on a game, and, unfortunately, the major RPG rut was already beginning... is it his fault the number of games sold wasn't as high as expected? I agree that he's to blame for some things, since he WAS in charge, but sometimes outside influences play a much more important role.
Considering how easy it was to turn off / not install, not sure what the problem was for us techies... I sure know that my non-techie sister and mother loved it a lot - amazingly, they felt they needed it when doing things like writing formal letters and such when they couldn't remember silly things like where to place the addresses (right aligned or left aligned, yours or theirs on top, etc.). As already said, it was a good idea, just wasn't used to the best of its potential (and no, popping up more often would not have been the ideal solution - may having more knowledge on official document layouts and such would have been good for people doing resumes and such (but don't know about the pre-made document styles available to them).
Don't you find it at all concidental that when EA did finally step in, the Ultima games became the worst they have ever been? Once they step in, we get the 'abortion' Ultima 8 and totally disgusting Ultmia 9 (which I'm sadly currently playing, just so I can finally say I beat them all, ugh).
I've never had any major problems with any of the older Ultimas. Sure, there was stuff like the 'lose keys' bug in Ultima 9, but considering the scope of the game, that's understandable - but there has been nothing even close to as nasty as what I'm up against in U9...
Why do you blame RG for bankrupting Origin? Many/most people consider U7 to be the best Ultima, so obviously he didn't do that much wrong - if it's sales, then how is it RG's fault? Was he supposed to consult the gypsy or something before letting it out the door? And do you have proof that it's RG that decided to make U8 the way it was and not some marketing droid? And you complain that U6 shipped buggy - uh, what game doesn't? Sure, it's a damn shame we have to put up with it, by why blame RG? Even your venerable Spector ships buggy games... (not that he didn't do work on U6 and U7-p2 anyhow, both buggy). My god, actually, every game he made has bugs, wow! Thief crashed on me quite a bit...
Anyhoo, you don't seem to have much proof anywhere that RG "drove Origin into the ground"... (and you seem very upset with him for some reason, attacking him personally by calling him unvirtuous... what did he ever do to you?)
>There is nothing more important than wealth
> creation.
Baw, you had me going until this point... now I see how ignorant you are to what's really happening in our society.
Uh, out of all the silliness in the article, that's the one you have to catch the author on? Youch...
So, uh, wouldn't he hold himself in contempt for hot sharing (being a "scholar" and all)? (of course, he's dead, but you'd think the "religion" would follow His words...
> Actually, the NSync (spell it right, dammit!)
Er, it's *NSync, actually... even though I'd never correct someone on the spelling of probably the worst band right now... wait, I just correct you... nooooooooooooo.......
A badly translated Sega PC Engine game called Zero Wing... someone gave a link to a Flash movie with excellent dubbed voice actors... But anyway, considering the joke's over a month old (and Slashdot's just catching on), you can basically say it's an old joke that's lost its charm.
That was soooo months ago... catch up with the geek culture, sheesh...
Right now, I'm able to go to a local arcade and play Unreal Tournament and a few other "arcade" games on a T1 connection to the internet for a certain amount of time per dollar (not that I'd spend that money)... What's the difference between that and what Sony plans (except for the obvious in using the PlayStation.. a lesser machine anyhow)?
*shrug* Nothing to see here, move along, move along...
I dunno about the text, but as for tables, as a designer, I'm forced sometimes by clients to make sure that nothing goes past a certain limit (since they believe their own clients are on PDA, 640x480 monitors, etc.) .. yes, of course there are ways to stretch things, but sometimes some clients (for example, the Canadian government) does not allow even that... accessibility is king it would seem.
Thought I'd like to add that I'm responding to this post using a Pentium 133, running IE 5.5 ... Considering I saw the same speed computer being sold for $50 in the paper, there's no reason why we should support anything less then that... (I also have the latest Mozilla running too... although not NS6, since I can't even install it for some reason).
First, your site is called Bangable, rate chicks and stuff... your clientel might not be into donating money. Second, your site is a ripoff of so many other sites... (there's event a rate the Rating Sites site out there!). Third, why would I donate to you? What do you offer me exactly? I could easily take my $1 and give it to something more charitable, or at the very least, a site that interests me on a daily basis and keeps me informed/smiling/whatever. Rating sites just plain don't do it.
Considering this keeps happening (including how another Romanian script kiddy did this to Undernet in 1997... this isn't just an isolated event. What can we ALL do? Or should we even care anymore, and just let IRC fall once and for all?
I'd chat with you more on this, but I can't seem to find any stable EFNet server...
Too true... that's beyond my work as a simple designer for individual departments, but I do know they're spending thousands upon thousands to improve their database/search engine... I hope so.. I still haven't even found the simplest thing on their sites yet... Thing is, CLF isn't just about making things pretty.. it enforces us (designers) to use meta tags and such to make the searching easier... hope it works :-/
Although you already replied to yourself, I feel I should still write some responses...
For example, page layout is specced out down to the exact pixel. We all know that this is bad, and I'm sure PDA users with 140x140 screens will be happy to know that content is NOT ALLOWED TO EXIST IN THE LEFT 150 PIXELS.
Same goes with any other net-enabled thing, like cell phones.... But the it comes down to one thing: do you want to build x-many sites to accomodate every single thing out there or should you at least go for what's going to be used most. Web enabled PDAs and cell-phones (including WebTV, which is is also smaller then 640 pixels) only account for less then 2% of web access (from StatMarket's update last month anyhow)... Is it really worth it? *shrug*
If it's bigger, well, everything after the 640'th pixel is whitespace.
As a designer, this is my biggest beef with the setup... I asked if I could format my pages to stretch with the resolution (not a hard thing to do when we're using all tables), but I was told no... Why?? Considering over 55% of the people out there use 800x600 resolution, that's a lot of wasted space...
Canadian web sites are loaded with tables (for layout purposes only, of course),
What's funny is, they pride themselves on strict adherence to the W3C guidelines, but CSS requires that tables not be used... *shrug*
blank filler GIFs
Inexcusable, considering I created a simple template that meets the guidelines 100% and doesn't need such silliness... lazy prorgramming I guess (although it's more work...)
text as images,
Considering the only font we're aloud to use is Arial, designers are forced to put text with other fonts in an image... bloody annoying, but ever try getting a Mac, Linux and PC looking the exact same thing with Helvetica, Times New Roman and Arial fonts all the same time? Damn tuff...
and things like institutional logos that can't be clicked on (no, you can't click on the Canada "wordmark", you have to click on the bit of text below it that says "Canada Site".
Well, for me, it doesn't say you CAN'T have it clickable... so I made it so... I think most people know to click on logos nowadays...
The CLF also dictates e-mail requirements.
You're right, it's stupid... You can see WHY they thought it up, but still stupid.
Don't get me started about the wonderfully EASY TO REMEMBER bilingual URLs that the CLF requires, nice stuff like www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/clf-upe, www.tbs-sct.gc.ca, etc.
Actually, that's wrong... The guideline says that you can either have a single word that's equal in both languages (justice), the style you mentioned or two domains, one for english and one for french (seperate, but still linked together so people can switch languages)... It's laziness and cheapness that stops people from choosing the third option... it's not the guideline's fault...
Ackkkkk... too looooonnggg.....
I work for a design firm here in Ottawa, Ontario Canada and all of the government (.gc.ca) sites are moving to a singular way of working - dubbed The Common Look and Feel. I'm personally quite happy with it, and not because it's stupidly easy for me to design a department's website using pre-made templates, but because it actually has some sense in it. The Canadian government is (unfortunately) spending untold millions of dollars on changing the sites over to a more accessible format - which is a good thing (of course, the old sites were good enough - why not spend those millions on something a little more useful? Emergency housing in Ottawa has up to a 7 year waiting list, but the department is spending over 500,000 on redesigning their website - excuse me? ... er, off topic a bit there...)
;-p )
Anyways, basically, we're moving to the most accessible sites possible, but still keeping design/looks-and-feel an important part of it... It'll fit in a 640x480 screen with 256 colours, but it'll at least look nice - that's the plan...
(hmm, I want target="_blank" abilities in Slashdot... that'd be nice...
Just to note, you link to Junk Busters with the .org domain. It should be .com
.com, not a non-profit .org
The website you mentioned clearly states:
- We are a for-profit
Many people assume that because we don't charge consumers for our services or software that we must be a non-profit, but we're not. We fund our operations from consulting and services to businesses. We choose work that we think benefits both ethical businesses and consumer privacy.
The proper link is http://www.junkbusters.com/