From what I've heard and seen, lockers at the beach went away for two reasons:
1) Vandalism -- there are always dicks who destroy stuff just to be destroying something.
2) Drug couriers using them for drops.
As to TFA, it seems to me that having a high tech beach is contrary to the whole purpose of going to the beach!!
Tho I'm reminded of an ad for Netware 5.5, where several Netware engineers are lounging on a tropical beach.... while doing a remote Netware install back at the office.
NT4.0 the original had a ton of issues, from what I've heard. Vastly better as of the final SP (there was one SP along the way that was a mess, tho). I never ran NT prior to Win2K, having no real reason to do so.
If you come across a server running NT4 and IIS-early-version, you can crash it just by making a dozen page requests, then interrupting them. -- There was a gov't-info site that would get slower and slower each day until it finally got unusable, and I discovered that if I lost patience with it and hammered it a few times with the browser, it would stall entirely, but would be miraculously better at 8am the next morning (when someone presumably came to work, found it hung, and rebooted it).
One reason I don't let mine do sleep mode is that most of 'em have hoary old HDs (5 to 8 years old) and when they've been running that long, you don't want 'em cooling down too far, cuz sometimes then they'll stiction. I have backups (and the one HD has the Creeping Crud and needs to be replaced anyway) but still, why court trouble?:)
Touchpads, ick:) I've thought about putting OSX on that G4, but I'm not about to pay retail... I have an old OSX CD that I got for a buck at a yard sale, but haven't got round to trying it.
Still using the tennis shoe network here.:!~
Sometimes one OS will get along with given hardware and the next won't, but that doesn't definitively mean it's the OS at fault -- often it's just that a different OS fails to trigger the hardware fault. A good example is the 47-day timer wrap issue in Win9x. Turns out that only about half of all systems are affected (including NONE of mine)... which implies that the Windows bug requires a matching hardware flaw to manifest.
I don't let my machines do sleep mode -- they get to turn off the monitor, and that's it. As to what part of the common wakeup issues is OS and how much is hardware... I suspect it's an evil synergy much like the timer bug.
My record is held by my 286/M$DOS6.00 machine that was my everyday work box for many years... in the course of 5 years it only had two reboots, once due to a prolonged power outage, and once cuz the MFM hard disk needed a fresh low-level format. I still have it, tho it was finally retired for good in 2001. That machine is why rebooting is against my religion.:)
I dislike the whole Mac way of doing things to where I'm not really motivated to do much to "improve" it... but next time I mess with that box, I'll fetch the stuff you mention and see how I like that. (Tho I'm not sure how I'll get it TO that box... it has a back-then-bleeding-edge DVD-RAM drive that will not read CDRs or standard DVD/DVDRs, and only knows *2GB* DVD disks. You read that right.) -- Yeah, I know you can use some-key plus click, but that makes everything a two-handed operation, and usually my other hand is already busy. I hate having to reach back and forth like that!
=====
Actually, most of the WinApps I use have been dragged from one box to another (not even on the same species of Windows, let alone the same location) multiple times. Sometimes I need to twiddle their registry settings, but for most, life goes on as before. So I do appreciate that feature. -- I understand that at the time the shared-executables/libraries concept came along, disk space was precious and expensive, but by the time the 6GB HD became standard (about 1997) that should have gone away, if only to simplify *Microsoft's* life (think of all the support calls that would never have happened if unrelated apps weren't trying to share stuff!)
=====
Direct app access: I inherited that G4 when it was about 5 years old, and it came with all sorts of software (Photoshop etc.) -- none of which were immediately accessable unless there was already a seed document cluttering the desktop. There didn't seem to be ANY sort of applications menu available, so I couldn't just start an app, *then* decide whether I wanted a new document or not. Once I discovered OS9.2's notion of a file manager, I was able to dumpster-dive for executables, provided I already had a clue what to look for, but... lordy, shades of the GEM Desktop!!! As I vaguely recall, there was no tree view, either.
======
As to the mess you're "enjoying" with WinXP and Dell systems... it's the hardware. Follow:
Someone gave me a Dell P4-3GHz machine, because he could not make the damned thing stop crashing -- if the CPU was kept ice-cold, then it was okay, but the moment it reached normal operating temperature, it locked up. And he got tired of fighting with 3rd party active cooling systems vs Dell's weird notion of how to attach a heatsink.
After some thrashing around, I noticed that EVERY time CPU usage spiked, it could be counted on to lock up within 10 seconds -- even if the CPU was dead cold. (For a test, I used a DOS antivirus app, which yanked CPU use to 100% and kept it there.) Aha... it's not temperature, since CPU temp hasn't hit 80F yet... it's high CPU *usage* itself that's at fault, or some combination of high CPU usage with lots of I/O. -- And... hmm. this Dell motherboard only knows PC2100 RAM, not the PC3200 one would *expect* to see with a 3GHz CPU. [blink] Looks like the motherboard design is about 2 years older than the CPU, and the two don't entirely match!!
I swapped the Dell stock CPU for another P4-3GHz, and still had the same problem. I then swapped it for a P4-2.1GHz CPU, from the era when RAM was still PC2100... and the crashing problem went away. It will now cheerfully run at 100% CPU usage all day long, even with the shitty Dell heatsink (which lacks a CPU fan) and hasn't crashed once since I downgraded the CPU. (The Dell's original CPU works fine in another machine -- even with PC2100 RAM -- so it was not at fault.)
So the problem wasn't WinXP at all, but rather, the fact that Dell shipped mismatched hardware, or an outright defective motherboard design that doesn't properly support the CPU they sold with it.
Fact is, all the OEMs are made as cheap as they can get away with (and IMO are *designed* to have an average lifespan of no more than 3 years), and sometimes that means cutting corners in ways that cause problems even a tech-literate person has a tough time figuring out.
=====
My main XP box (my multimedia machine, an 8 year ol
[laughing] I had similar problems with the Mac. I've got a G4 here that I've messed with a bit, and it's one annoyance after another. What do yo mean no RClick, why do I have to activate the window before I have a useful menu, who stole the direct apps access? little stuff like that just annoyed the crap out of me. And mind you, I've been shopping for a replacement OS for Windows for several years now. Mac ain't it. (Neither is linux, tho it comes closer.... but still too many places where I find myself thinking WTF? Who broke this??!)
Can't say WinXP does much to motivate me either... runs on any piece of shit, and the damn thing never crashes and never needs rebooting, what sort of incentive to switch is that?!
Clearly their technology both modular and standardized from top to bottom, whether you're the Death Star or a lowly R2 unit.
The nearest equivalent in mundane computers is the serial or parallel port printer, which will attach to and work with just about any PC from any era. (We'll ignore the problem of driver availability for this discussion... tho I use the HPLJ2 driver across over 20 years worth of PCs and a dozen OSs, and it works with a wide variety of printers... so even that isn't an insoluble problem.)
As to your parent post, this 8 year old computer I'm using agrees with you 100% -- it would really suck to have those years of faithful service rewarded by being relegated to the scrapheap, even tho it's still not only fully functional, but also does everything I really need done. After all, most of the time, the computer need only outpace the user's typing skills, since it spends most of its life waiting.
As I've said before, I really like the Open Library project... but as someone down below points out, the one thing it really lacks is some evident way to search for titles and authors, or to simply browse the collection. The page with the cover graphics is visually interesting, but not real useful if you want to randomly browse or search for titles/authors.
The other thing that I found a bit lacking, was a quick way to locate the downloadables (zipped flipbook, text, etc.) I tripped over them by accident, but... that would be a good thing to add to a general listing area, per above, for quick access (especially for folks who want to fetch copies to use on portable devices, or just to archive them... the more copies are out there, the less chance of something being lost forever).
I thought that too... then I actually read some books there. Worked pretty well, enough that I enjoyed the experience. About the only thing it lacks is the ability to set bookmarks, which conceivably could be done with cookies.
I suspect you are right. Remember that in some times and places, knowledge preserved in books was NOT available to the public; you had to be a member of the upperclass, of a monastery, etc, before you were allowed to read it, lest OMG someone else learn The Secrets (whatever those might be).
The old stuff, the dime novels and pulps of a previous century, classics that have fallen out of academia's sights, antique reference books and manuals... THOSE are the things most in danger of being completely lost. And no wonder, when the current generation can't see any value in preserving them, let alone reading them. Do they likewise see no value in other artifacts of history??
It's the old stuff I can't find ANYWHERE else that interests me about the Open Library project. Obscure? Maybe now, but not necessarily in its day. And regardless, that doesn't mean it should be thrown on the scrapheap of history. What is ignored today may well be tomorrow's classic.
Oh, there's already Project Gutenburg? A commendable project, and all well and good for plain text. But what about stuff like the very first book I ever looked at from the Open Library.... it had dozens of lovely drawings that would naturally be lost without the full-page scans (and for all we know, may not be preserved anywhere else).
The big advantage of such projects is that if enough people worldwide make copies for their personal archives, that's a hedge against the material being lost (via natural disaster, civil disorder, or whatever). We don't have to suffer another burning of the Library at Alexandria -- we have the means to spread preserved copies far and wide. Let's take advantage of that, not denigrate the archivists' efforts.
Another point: how long before cursing in public forums is also censored? After all, it's reaching a wide audience, just like radio and TV; in fact one might say sites like slashdot are the talk-radio of our era.
There are local laws against cursing in public, here and there, often dating back to the 1800s. Enforced? Rarely, if ever. You'd have to arrest everyone, sooner or later.
As you note, these words exist for a reason, and if banned or deprecated, something else takes their place.
And for those who say "I don't NEED to curse", they apparently don't understand nuances... such as how "screwed up" doesn't carry the implication of maliciousness conveyed by "fucked up".
In the context of modern computers... has anyone written a program to exactly emulate the Enigma machine? I mean with as near to the same interface, logic, and everything else as can be managed between keyboard and screen.
Yep, same here. Main page loads fine, but comment and reply pages are taking 20 seconds or longer each. I'm surprised I haven't gotten any timeout errors, like someone in another discussion noted.
And I use the low-bandwidth option and a CSS-free browser, which normally has no perceptible lag. But today I just about have to drive stakes to see if it's moving!!
Probably explains why most of today's stories have relatively few comments -- people are getting timed out, or giving up and going away, like I did earlier (couple hours ago, only the main page would load at all; others never did come up no matter how long I waited).
I just hope none of this tinkering breaks slashdot for those of us that want it essentially as plaintext (as one sees in low-bandwidth mode and a CSS-free browser). I can't use the site otherwise; as seen with all the bells and whistles, it makes my eyes bleed.
I don't get a timeout error like you're getting, but today all the discussion and reply pages are taking 20-30 seconds to come up (the index page is not affected).
And all that would do here is prevent me from listening to their station. NO radio station is so important that I will radically change MY way of doing stuff to accomodate THEM. My choice is naked WinAmp, and if they don't offer a stream that works with it, oh well... there's other music out there to discover. Listening to the radio, by whatever means, is supposed to *enhance* my day, not piss me off.
Not showing artist/title is annoying, but I can put up with it... but it actively prevents me from pursuing any that I like well enough to buy, too.
When I was DJing, I used seamless segues whenever I could work them out -- it's fun to go from one genre or style to a contrasting genre or style by way of such transitions, and it draws the listener along with you, even when the next cut might not otherwise be to their taste.
But as you say, the automated crossfading is just annoying. It creates several seconds of outright NOISE, in no way related to the music. And it ruins songs that have a special beginning or end.
One of the online stations I listen to has started doing it, and at first it was just a couple seconds worth and not so bad, but now it's longer, and the result sounds like bleed-through on an old tape. How long before they do it full-time??!
The one good thing I can see from this is that it could prevent other companies from implementing adservers in *their* software... so the more broad and vague this patent is, quite possibly the better it ultimately will be for the consumer... because if we're lucky, no one but M$ will be allowed to incorporate adware into their OS and major apps.
What about states that have draconian preserve-your-privacy laws, like California? ISTM that such software is treading a dangerously thin legal line, EULA or no.
And once they start doing this... even if you can disallow inspection of user-files, how do you know the software doesn't still look at your files, even if not for advertising purposes?
I mostly like Windows and generally don't care for linux as a desktop, but advertising as part of the OS would drive me away from any potential Windows upgrade so fast that Redmond's pixels would spin. If the alternatives were the annoyances of the linux desktop or the snooping and adware of a Windows desktop, I'll take being annoyed over being snooped and blipverted.
(No, for me the Mac is not an option, it's a prison. Sorry, MacBois. And what makes you think Apple would be far behind, if M$ manages to make a success of an ad-infested OS?)
Try the low bandwidth option, and a browser that don't know no CSS. The result is essentially plain text. That's what I see when I come here.:)
Moz/Firefox has a problem with ignoring system colours, but good old Netscape 3 does not -- so I get slashdot with the grey background I use everywhere else. Much easier on these aging, glare-sensitive eyes.
I've noticed that more and more people use a browser fullscreen, no matter how wide that is, then they wonder why they can't FIND stuff on the screen... When I design websites, I try to compensate by constraining text and navigation to a reasonable width, so these folks' eyes don't go whanging into the far edge of the screen with every line they read.
Slashdot Mirror
From what I've heard and seen, lockers at the beach went away for two reasons:
1) Vandalism -- there are always dicks who destroy stuff just to be destroying something.
2) Drug couriers using them for drops.
As to TFA, it seems to me that having a high tech beach is contrary to the whole purpose of going to the beach!!
Tho I'm reminded of an ad for Netware 5.5, where several Netware engineers are lounging on a tropical beach.... while doing a remote Netware install back at the office.
NT4.0 the original had a ton of issues, from what I've heard. Vastly better as of the final SP (there was one SP along the way that was a mess, tho). I never ran NT prior to Win2K, having no real reason to do so.
:)
If you come across a server running NT4 and IIS-early-version, you can crash it just by making a dozen page requests, then interrupting them. -- There was a gov't-info site that would get slower and slower each day until it finally got unusable, and I discovered that if I lost patience with it and hammered it a few times with the browser, it would stall entirely, but would be miraculously better at 8am the next morning (when someone presumably came to work, found it hung, and rebooted it).
One reason I don't let mine do sleep mode is that most of 'em have hoary old HDs (5 to 8 years old) and when they've been running that long, you don't want 'em cooling down too far, cuz sometimes then they'll stiction. I have backups (and the one HD has the Creeping Crud and needs to be replaced anyway) but still, why court trouble?
Touchpads, ick :) I've thought about putting OSX on that G4, but I'm not about to pay retail ... I have an old OSX CD that I got for a buck at a yard sale, but haven't got round to trying it.
:!~
... which implies that the Windows bug requires a matching hardware flaw to manifest.
:)
Still using the tennis shoe network here.
Sometimes one OS will get along with given hardware and the next won't, but that doesn't definitively mean it's the OS at fault -- often it's just that a different OS fails to trigger the hardware fault. A good example is the 47-day timer wrap issue in Win9x. Turns out that only about half of all systems are affected (including NONE of mine)
I don't let my machines do sleep mode -- they get to turn off the monitor, and that's it. As to what part of the common wakeup issues is OS and how much is hardware... I suspect it's an evil synergy much like the timer bug.
My record is held by my 286/M$DOS6.00 machine that was my everyday work box for many years... in the course of 5 years it only had two reboots, once due to a prolonged power outage, and once cuz the MFM hard disk needed a fresh low-level format. I still have it, tho it was finally retired for good in 2001. That machine is why rebooting is against my religion.
I dislike the whole Mac way of doing things to where I'm not really motivated to do much to "improve" it... but next time I mess with that box, I'll fetch the stuff you mention and see how I like that. (Tho I'm not sure how I'll get it TO that box... it has a back-then-bleeding-edge DVD-RAM drive that will not read CDRs or standard DVD/DVDRs, and only knows *2GB* DVD disks. You read that right.) -- Yeah, I know you can use some-key plus click, but that makes everything a two-handed operation, and usually my other hand is already busy. I hate having to reach back and forth like that!
... lordy, shades of the GEM Desktop!!! As I vaguely recall, there was no tree view, either.
... and the crashing problem went away. It will now cheerfully run at 100% CPU usage all day long, even with the shitty Dell heatsink (which lacks a CPU fan) and hasn't crashed once since I downgraded the CPU. (The Dell's original CPU works fine in another machine -- even with PC2100 RAM -- so it was not at fault.)
=====
Actually, most of the WinApps I use have been dragged from one box to another (not even on the same species of Windows, let alone the same location) multiple times. Sometimes I need to twiddle their registry settings, but for most, life goes on as before. So I do appreciate that feature. -- I understand that at the time the shared-executables/libraries concept came along, disk space was precious and expensive, but by the time the 6GB HD became standard (about 1997) that should have gone away, if only to simplify *Microsoft's* life (think of all the support calls that would never have happened if unrelated apps weren't trying to share stuff!)
=====
Direct app access: I inherited that G4 when it was about 5 years old, and it came with all sorts of software (Photoshop etc.) -- none of which were immediately accessable unless there was already a seed document cluttering the desktop. There didn't seem to be ANY sort of applications menu available, so I couldn't just start an app, *then* decide whether I wanted a new document or not. Once I discovered OS9.2's notion of a file manager, I was able to dumpster-dive for executables, provided I already had a clue what to look for, but
======
As to the mess you're "enjoying" with WinXP and Dell systems... it's the hardware. Follow:
Someone gave me a Dell P4-3GHz machine, because he could not make the damned thing stop crashing -- if the CPU was kept ice-cold, then it was okay, but the moment it reached normal operating temperature, it locked up. And he got tired of fighting with 3rd party active cooling systems vs Dell's weird notion of how to attach a heatsink.
After some thrashing around, I noticed that EVERY time CPU usage spiked, it could be counted on to lock up within 10 seconds -- even if the CPU was dead cold. (For a test, I used a DOS antivirus app, which yanked CPU use to 100% and kept it there.) Aha... it's not temperature, since CPU temp hasn't hit 80F yet... it's high CPU *usage* itself that's at fault, or some combination of high CPU usage with lots of I/O. -- And... hmm. this Dell motherboard only knows PC2100 RAM, not the PC3200 one would *expect* to see with a 3GHz CPU. [blink] Looks like the motherboard design is about 2 years older than the CPU, and the two don't entirely match!!
I swapped the Dell stock CPU for another P4-3GHz, and still had the same problem. I then swapped it for a P4-2.1GHz CPU, from the era when RAM was still PC2100
So the problem wasn't WinXP at all, but rather, the fact that Dell shipped mismatched hardware, or an outright defective motherboard design that doesn't properly support the CPU they sold with it.
Fact is, all the OEMs are made as cheap as they can get away with (and IMO are *designed* to have an average lifespan of no more than 3 years), and sometimes that means cutting corners in ways that cause problems even a tech-literate person has a tough time figuring out.
=====
My main XP box (my multimedia machine, an 8 year ol
[laughing] Yeah, I've heard that. Apparently the earliest form of bureaucrat is the Tax Collector!!
[laughing] I had similar problems with the Mac. I've got a G4 here that I've messed with a bit, and it's one annoyance after another. What do yo mean no RClick, why do I have to activate the window before I have a useful menu, who stole the direct apps access? little stuff like that just annoyed the crap out of me. And mind you, I've been shopping for a replacement OS for Windows for several years now. Mac ain't it. (Neither is linux, tho it comes closer.... but still too many places where I find myself thinking WTF? Who broke this??!)
Can't say WinXP does much to motivate me either... runs on any piece of shit, and the damn thing never crashes and never needs rebooting, what sort of incentive to switch is that?!
Clearly their technology both modular and standardized from top to bottom, whether you're the Death Star or a lowly R2 unit.
The nearest equivalent in mundane computers is the serial or parallel port printer, which will attach to and work with just about any PC from any era. (We'll ignore the problem of driver availability for this discussion... tho I use the HPLJ2 driver across over 20 years worth of PCs and a dozen OSs, and it works with a wide variety of printers... so even that isn't an insoluble problem.)
As to your parent post, this 8 year old computer I'm using agrees with you 100% -- it would really suck to have those years of faithful service rewarded by being relegated to the scrapheap, even tho it's still not only fully functional, but also does everything I really need done. After all, most of the time, the computer need only outpace the user's typing skills, since it spends most of its life waiting.
Not instantaneous on dialup, but still reasonable -- the scans aren't real large per page. On broadband, yes, it's flipflipflip, that fast.
Interesting, thanks for the history.
... that would be a good thing to add to a general listing area, per above, for quick access (especially for folks who want to fetch copies to use on portable devices, or just to archive them ... the more copies are out there, the less chance of something being lost forever).
As I've said before, I really like the Open Library project... but as someone down below points out, the one thing it really lacks is some evident way to search for titles and authors, or to simply browse the collection. The page with the cover graphics is visually interesting, but not real useful if you want to randomly browse or search for titles/authors.
The other thing that I found a bit lacking, was a quick way to locate the downloadables (zipped flipbook, text, etc.) I tripped over them by accident, but
I thought that too... then I actually read some books there. Worked pretty well, enough that I enjoyed the experience. About the only thing it lacks is the ability to set bookmarks, which conceivably could be done with cookies.
I suspect you are right. Remember that in some times and places, knowledge preserved in books was NOT available to the public; you had to be a member of the upperclass, of a monastery, etc, before you were allowed to read it, lest OMG someone else learn The Secrets (whatever those might be).
It's not just publishers. I've had two best-selling authors tell me that they hate libraries, and consider them "theft".
The old stuff, the dime novels and pulps of a previous century, classics that have fallen out of academia's sights, antique reference books and manuals... THOSE are the things most in danger of being completely lost. And no wonder, when the current generation can't see any value in preserving them, let alone reading them. Do they likewise see no value in other artifacts of history??
.... it had dozens of lovely drawings that would naturally be lost without the full-page scans (and for all we know, may not be preserved anywhere else).
It's the old stuff I can't find ANYWHERE else that interests me about the Open Library project. Obscure? Maybe now, but not necessarily in its day. And regardless, that doesn't mean it should be thrown on the scrapheap of history. What is ignored today may well be tomorrow's classic.
Oh, there's already Project Gutenburg? A commendable project, and all well and good for plain text. But what about stuff like the very first book I ever looked at from the Open Library
The big advantage of such projects is that if enough people worldwide make copies for their personal archives, that's a hedge against the material being lost (via natural disaster, civil disorder, or whatever). We don't have to suffer another burning of the Library at Alexandria -- we have the means to spread preserved copies far and wide. Let's take advantage of that, not denigrate the archivists' efforts.
Another point: how long before cursing in public forums is also censored? After all, it's reaching a wide audience, just like radio and TV; in fact one might say sites like slashdot are the talk-radio of our era.
... such as how "screwed up" doesn't carry the implication of maliciousness conveyed by "fucked up".
There are local laws against cursing in public, here and there, often dating back to the 1800s. Enforced? Rarely, if ever. You'd have to arrest everyone, sooner or later.
As you note, these words exist for a reason, and if banned or deprecated, something else takes their place.
And for those who say "I don't NEED to curse", they apparently don't understand nuances
"Results 1 - 10 of about 887,000 for enigma emulator"
:) Too many to fish through for good ones. Found a link in some other post, tho... good enough for now!
Geez, everyone in the known universe
In the context of modern computers... has anyone written a program to exactly emulate the Enigma machine? I mean with as near to the same interface, logic, and everything else as can be managed between keyboard and screen.
Yep, same here. Main page loads fine, but comment and reply pages are taking 20 seconds or longer each. I'm surprised I haven't gotten any timeout errors, like someone in another discussion noted.
And I use the low-bandwidth option and a CSS-free browser, which normally has no perceptible lag. But today I just about have to drive stakes to see if it's moving!!
Probably explains why most of today's stories have relatively few comments -- people are getting timed out, or giving up and going away, like I did earlier (couple hours ago, only the main page would load at all; others never did come up no matter how long I waited).
I just hope none of this tinkering breaks slashdot for those of us that want it essentially as plaintext (as one sees in low-bandwidth mode and a CSS-free browser). I can't use the site otherwise; as seen with all the bells and whistles, it makes my eyes bleed.
I don't get a timeout error like you're getting, but today all the discussion and reply pages are taking 20-30 seconds to come up (the index page is not affected).
2 8
Might be a side effect of the new Discussion 2 thing, listed on the main article page.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/19/17162
Hope it doesn't screw up the low-bandwidth and no-CSS setups (which I use... the regular view makes my eyes crazy).
And all that would do here is prevent me from listening to their station. NO radio station is so important that I will radically change MY way of doing stuff to accomodate THEM. My choice is naked WinAmp, and if they don't offer a stream that works with it, oh well... there's other music out there to discover. Listening to the radio, by whatever means, is supposed to *enhance* my day, not piss me off.
Not showing artist/title is annoying, but I can put up with it... but it actively prevents me from pursuing any that I like well enough to buy, too.
Talk about cutting their own throats....
Yep... there's a vast difference.
When I was DJing, I used seamless segues whenever I could work them out -- it's fun to go from one genre or style to a contrasting genre or style by way of such transitions, and it draws the listener along with you, even when the next cut might not otherwise be to their taste.
But as you say, the automated crossfading is just annoying. It creates several seconds of outright NOISE, in no way related to the music. And it ruins songs that have a special beginning or end.
One of the online stations I listen to has started doing it, and at first it was just a couple seconds worth and not so bad, but now it's longer, and the result sounds like bleed-through on an old tape. How long before they do it full-time??!
And meanwhile, I'm *prevented* from buying it even if I want to, because I don't know who and what it IS.
And if it's an instrumental piece... no lyrics to google for anyway.
The one good thing I can see from this is that it could prevent other companies from implementing adservers in *their* software... so the more broad and vague this patent is, quite possibly the better it ultimately will be for the consumer... because if we're lucky, no one but M$ will be allowed to incorporate adware into their OS and major apps.
What about states that have draconian preserve-your-privacy laws, like California? ISTM that such software is treading a dangerously thin legal line, EULA or no.
And once they start doing this... even if you can disallow inspection of user-files, how do you know the software doesn't still look at your files, even if not for advertising purposes?
I mostly like Windows and generally don't care for linux as a desktop, but advertising as part of the OS would drive me away from any potential Windows upgrade so fast that Redmond's pixels would spin. If the alternatives were the annoyances of the linux desktop or the snooping and adware of a Windows desktop, I'll take being annoyed over being snooped and blipverted.
(No, for me the Mac is not an option, it's a prison. Sorry, MacBois. And what makes you think Apple would be far behind, if M$ manages to make a success of an ad-infested OS?)
Try the low bandwidth option, and a browser that don't know no CSS. The result is essentially plain text. That's what I see when I come here. :)
Moz/Firefox has a problem with ignoring system colours, but good old Netscape 3 does not -- so I get slashdot with the grey background I use everywhere else. Much easier on these aging, glare-sensitive eyes.
I've noticed that more and more people use a browser fullscreen, no matter how wide that is, then they wonder why they can't FIND stuff on the screen... When I design websites, I try to compensate by constraining text and navigation to a reasonable width, so these folks' eyes don't go whanging into the far edge of the screen with every line they read.