I think people used to say the same thing about popup blocking: it was okay, as long as it wasn't going to be the default in Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox/whatever. Now it is not only the default for Firefox, but the feature has been implemented and is, I believe, default in IE as well. (I try to avoid IE as much as possible, so I could be wrong about this.)
I wouldn't be surprised if we see custom builds of Firefox with automatically updated filtersets emerge. And that might even evolve into official builds of Firefox.
Yes, it's going to be a drastic change in the ecology of websites. But as we can see, there are lots of alternatives: text ads, subscriber sponsored websites, donation sponsored websites, etc. I don't think we'll ever see any particular website model vanish off the map. But we might see a lot less advertising if it becomes ineffective. (Or maybe just less obtrustive advertising.)
Ubuntu just barely showed up on my radar and entered my, "I'll consider it," zone; then suddenly I started seeing just a little too much irrational exuberance.
I'm a Debian guy. I've had sojourns with Gentoo and others when necessary, but I have yet to see anything that's going to take me away from Debian permanently.
In addition to the suggestion another poster offered, try the Tabbrowser Preferences extension. I thought I wanted just what you described, and installed this extension in order to get it, but then I decided was that what I really wanted was for all links to open in the same window, and I could personally decide when I wanted a new tab (or even window); the extension gave me that ability, as well.
What happens if Tridge's client sucks? What happens if it corrupts older files?
Only the server could possibly corrupt older files. If the server is written correctly, it should not be possible for the client to take an action that would result in corruption of older files.
What exactly do you want him to say? He's never agreed to the BitKeeper license, and he's not bound by it. How could his defense possibly be any stronger?
What is this, some kind of astroturfing effort by McVoy to try to make us think that "everyone" feels like Tridge's defense is weak? What, exactly, is deficient in his statement?
Why wait until some undefined "later" point to explain one's self, if one has nothing to hide?
That's a good question. We should immediately execute anybody who insists on talking to a lawyer when arrested. After all, why wait until some undefined "later" point to explain one's self, if one has nothing to hide?
Back then you had a very few options: Borland Pascal, Borland C/C++, IBM's C/C++, and, since IBM was heavily pushing their Visual Age for Java, Java. It's probably different nowadays.
Our super programmer most preferred Pascal and definitely preferred anything besides the IBM IDE.
My grandfather didn't really care; he just got up when it was light out, regardless of time.
Not a bad idea. I once regulated my sleeping time by the rise and setting of the sun for a couple of weeks, crossing a time change. I was able to go through the change without any problems, still getting my eight hours of sleep each night. I was waking up at a weird time either just before or just after the change, though.
I participated in this in 1998. We had a super programmer, an electrical engineer, and me. I think most of our success came from the super programmer. We did great at our school contest and the regional contest, but we just bombed at the international contest. Either we choked, or the testsets being used by the judges were just incredibly rigorous.:)
Here's a picture of us, for anyone bored enough to be interested, and here's a retrospective on the contest.
To this day I am still finding IBM advertising junk I have from that contest, especially IBM yo-yos. (Seriously.)
You make such insightful comments, and yet you have me as foe. I wonder what I said. Must've been political, because we sound very agreed about software.
Bruce, thanks for holding the line out there. Ultimately, I think we are going to see a day when it becomes evident that Free software wins out on both idealistic and pragmatic grounds. Compromises like the BitMover incident will continue to occur, but Free software development is only going to accelerate and snowball. I believe it's only inevitable.
Well, I care because I think it's funny. The idea that we should ignore them and not give them attention does carry some weight with me, but I'm not concerned that giving them attention is going to do any serious damage. I wouldn't think the attention would result in actual sales of their product, which could be the only damage I could see, but if it did, I'd still blame the purchaser for not doing some research.
It's kind of a "do we feed the trolls for entertainment, or ignore them and hope they go away" sort of question. Valid points on both sides; some of us want them to go away, while some of us want a good laugh.
Huh? I know you're exaggerating, but I think you mistook my meaning.
By my definitions, I can't be "bothering" anybody in any meaningful way by posting my opinion that most Flash web work is useless. I'm just sharing an opinion. I don't think I even have any particular pride in my opinion. I'd just like some web developer who's all sold on Flash to know that, as a web reader, I don't think the reasons that he's sold on Flash add anything to my web reading experience.
If he wants to go on using Flash and has an audience for it, that's great. As I told another guy this morning who said he was just about to start a career in Flash development, if he can make money off of it, I think that's spectacular! I just want people to know that they won't be getting much attention and/or money out of me.
I don't use it, other than occasionally pulling up IE.
If somebody has a site that I think is worthwhile which requires Flash, I'm in one of two scenarios:
The Flash content is worthwhile (example: JibJab movies). In this case, I'll just use IE or a standalone viewer, and I won't complain at all.
The Flash content is irrelevant, but the site still has something useful. In this case, I might express my opinion to the owner of the site that the Flash detracts from the site and adds no value. If I'm lucky, he'll listen.
The messages above were simply designed to let the guy know that Flash probably wasn't adding anything readers would feel is worthwhile. To my knowledge, nobody's rights or liberty were violated.;)
Let me be the first to say that I as a site reader don't want any of the features Flash provides. If you make funny Flash videos, I do like those, and if you make Flash games, those make sense to me, but I don't personally play them. Beyond that, I have never, ever seen any use of Flash that made a site more interesting or beneficial to me. And if a site insists on having a Flash intro for me to get in, I skip it. (There is one site in the entire world right now that has enough worthwhile stuff in it for me to load IE and use Flash to get in. And I hate that it uses Flash and am longing for the day when it is just a website.)
But if you find you can make a living that way, I think that's great, and I say more power to you. I just probably won't be one of the readers of your site.
Video games are great, but they are not the lasting pull of the Internet for me. I'm here for the chance to exchange insights with people.
Basically, any site that exists for game playing would make sense to include SOME Flash content (the games themselves). Same goes for those funny movies. But sites themselves do not need to CONSIST of Flash. They do not need whizbang Flash intros. They do not need Flash site navigation. That stuff is crap, I do not want it, and I do not go to sites that use it. And you will not make me become a person who does go to those sites, either through persuasion, or through shaming like you tried on that other post.
Unless you site is a gaming site or a funny movie site, I don't see a purpose to you having Flash at all.
For the most part, I ignore the Flash puzzle piece icons. Usually it's some unnecessary thing over on the side of the site. If I notice it, I'm usually glad I missed whatever was supposed to be there. Most of the time, there's not even anything missing from the site. But sometimes a site just contains one of those puzzle piece icons... and I go somewhere else. Or email you, if I'm nice, and complain that I want to USE your site, not have a visually appealing experience.
I'll worry about making things look nice on my computer. You worry about having something I want to read, okay?
How can you NOT have flash installed. There are many legit sites that include flash.
There is one site I would desperately like to get more out of, but Flash hinders that. I expect them to wise up in time.
It provides much more functionality than straight HTML pages.
But nothing I want.
You can include Video and sound.
I don't want it. If I want video or sound, I want it as a downloadable media file.
You're not restricted to the page placement limitations of HTML pages.
I don't want that in HTML pages I read. You are talking about things that site authors want, not site readers.
You can create full functional applications with Flash where you cannot do the same with HTML.
But I don't want that.
If you're not installing flash because a few bad apples cause popup ads to appear, then you're totally missing out what Today's Net can do.
I'm not installing Flash because I don't want all the whizbang stuff it does.
Say hello to the 1990's for me.
So if you can't succeed in persuading us that we want the features Flash offers when we know we don't, you'll try to make us feel old-fashioned and foolish? You can't persuade us, so you'll try to shame us? I'm sorry, but that just sounds silly.
I won't cuss you out like one of your other respondants did, but I agree with his point that we don't want the stuff Flash offers.
The only value I have gotten from Flash is funny presentations like the recent JibJab movies. Some other people also like some of the Flash games. But again, I just want to download video files to watch. I don't want the entire web to consist of them.
Let me reiterate again: I do not want the functionality that you brag about Flash providing.
How many people are going to keep blocking ads until one of their site goes down from costs, then will they realise?
I seriously doubt that ad-funded sites are going to go away entirely. But even if they did, it would just mean the world would change. Something different would emerge. Sites funded through user fees. Sites funded by voluntary donation. Sites funded solely through the goodwill of the site owner.
At the moment we have a rich ecology of internet sites with a mixture of all four of these types (ad-funded, owner-funded, subscriber-funded, donation-funded) as well as other paradigms and mixtures of the above. I don't think it would be any particular crisis if the ad-funded genus disappeared, but I don't think it is likely to happen, anyway.
Did some research today on previous April Fools' Days here at Slashdot. Slashdot has been deliberately posting dupes on April 1st in order to make fun of their tendency to post dupes since at least 1998 or 1999.
And people were griping and missing the jokes back then, too.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I think people used to say the same thing about popup blocking: it was okay, as long as it wasn't going to be the default in Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox/whatever. Now it is not only the default for Firefox, but the feature has been implemented and is, I believe, default in IE as well. (I try to avoid IE as much as possible, so I could be wrong about this.)
I wouldn't be surprised if we see custom builds of Firefox with automatically updated filtersets emerge. And that might even evolve into official builds of Firefox.
Yes, it's going to be a drastic change in the ecology of websites. But as we can see, there are lots of alternatives: text ads, subscriber sponsored websites, donation sponsored websites, etc. I don't think we'll ever see any particular website model vanish off the map. But we might see a lot less advertising if it becomes ineffective. (Or maybe just less obtrustive advertising.)
Ubuntu just barely showed up on my radar and entered my, "I'll consider it," zone; then suddenly I started seeing just a little too much irrational exuberance.
I'm a Debian guy. I've had sojourns with Gentoo and others when necessary, but I have yet to see anything that's going to take me away from Debian permanently.
is that enough of a list? Do you need more?
Don't forget Opera.
In addition to the suggestion another poster offered, try the Tabbrowser Preferences extension. I thought I wanted just what you described, and installed this extension in order to get it, but then I decided was that what I really wanted was for all links to open in the same window, and I could personally decide when I wanted a new tab (or even window); the extension gave me that ability, as well.
however, Ubuntu has a theme/reputation amongst non-linux users as a friendly, easy to use Windows alternative
It does?
Starting to sound like Ubuntu is the new Gentoo.
Amazing. The exact same post was made by Concern, here. And then Squiggleslash replies with the exact same reply that Redswinglinestapler replies with here.
Are you guys just all the same people, or what?
Moderators: this is redundant, and overrated.
What happens if Tridge's client sucks? What happens if it corrupts older files?
Only the server could possibly corrupt older files. If the server is written correctly, it should not be possible for the client to take an action that would result in corruption of older files.
What exactly do you want him to say? He's never agreed to the BitKeeper license, and he's not bound by it. How could his defense possibly be any stronger?
What is this, some kind of astroturfing effort by McVoy to try to make us think that "everyone" feels like Tridge's defense is weak? What, exactly, is deficient in his statement?
Why wait until some undefined "later" point to explain one's self, if one has nothing to hide?
That's a good question. We should immediately execute anybody who insists on talking to a lawyer when arrested. After all, why wait until some undefined "later" point to explain one's self, if one has nothing to hide?
Back then you had a very few options: Borland Pascal, Borland C/C++, IBM's C/C++, and, since IBM was heavily pushing their Visual Age for Java, Java. It's probably different nowadays.
Our super programmer most preferred Pascal and definitely preferred anything besides the IBM IDE.
According to ahref=http://www.standardtime.com/http://www.stand ardtime.com/>, farmers generally oppose daylight saving time.
My grandfather didn't really care; he just got up when it was light out, regardless of time.
Not a bad idea. I once regulated my sleeping time by the rise and setting of the sun for a couple of weeks, crossing a time change. I was able to go through the change without any problems, still getting my eight hours of sleep each night. I was waking up at a weird time either just before or just after the change, though.
I participated in this in 1998. We had a super programmer, an electrical engineer, and me. I think most of our success came from the super programmer. We did great at our school contest and the regional contest, but we just bombed at the international contest. Either we choked, or the testsets being used by the judges were just incredibly rigorous. :)
Here's a picture of us, for anyone bored enough to be interested, and here's a retrospective on the contest.
To this day I am still finding IBM advertising junk I have from that contest, especially IBM yo-yos. (Seriously.)
You make such insightful comments, and yet you have me as foe. I wonder what I said. Must've been political, because we sound very agreed about software.
Bruce, thanks for holding the line out there. Ultimately, I think we are going to see a day when it becomes evident that Free software wins out on both idealistic and pragmatic grounds. Compromises like the BitMover incident will continue to occur, but Free software development is only going to accelerate and snowball. I believe it's only inevitable.
Well, I care because I think it's funny. The idea that we should ignore them and not give them attention does carry some weight with me, but I'm not concerned that giving them attention is going to do any serious damage. I wouldn't think the attention would result in actual sales of their product, which could be the only damage I could see, but if it did, I'd still blame the purchaser for not doing some research.
It's kind of a "do we feed the trolls for entertainment, or ignore them and hope they go away" sort of question. Valid points on both sides; some of us want them to go away, while some of us want a good laugh.
Huh? I know you're exaggerating, but I think you mistook my meaning.
By my definitions, I can't be "bothering" anybody in any meaningful way by posting my opinion that most Flash web work is useless. I'm just sharing an opinion. I don't think I even have any particular pride in my opinion. I'd just like some web developer who's all sold on Flash to know that, as a web reader, I don't think the reasons that he's sold on Flash add anything to my web reading experience.
If he wants to go on using Flash and has an audience for it, that's great. As I told another guy this morning who said he was just about to start a career in Flash development, if he can make money off of it, I think that's spectacular! I just want people to know that they won't be getting much attention and/or money out of me.
I don't use it, other than occasionally pulling up IE.
If somebody has a site that I think is worthwhile which requires Flash, I'm in one of two scenarios:
The messages above were simply designed to let the guy know that Flash probably wasn't adding anything readers would feel is worthwhile. To my knowledge, nobody's rights or liberty were violated. ;)
A flawed business model is not licence for you to take content without compensation.
Yes, but an HTTP server connected to the public Internet without password protection can be construed as one.
Let me be the first to say that I as a site reader don't want any of the features Flash provides. If you make funny Flash videos, I do like those, and if you make Flash games, those make sense to me, but I don't personally play them. Beyond that, I have never, ever seen any use of Flash that made a site more interesting or beneficial to me. And if a site insists on having a Flash intro for me to get in, I skip it. (There is one site in the entire world right now that has enough worthwhile stuff in it for me to load IE and use Flash to get in. And I hate that it uses Flash and am longing for the day when it is just a website.)
But if you find you can make a living that way, I think that's great, and I say more power to you. I just probably won't be one of the readers of your site.
Flash allows you to play video games.
Video games are great, but they are not the lasting pull of the Internet for me. I'm here for the chance to exchange insights with people.
Basically, any site that exists for game playing would make sense to include SOME Flash content (the games themselves). Same goes for those funny movies. But sites themselves do not need to CONSIST of Flash. They do not need whizbang Flash intros. They do not need Flash site navigation. That stuff is crap, I do not want it, and I do not go to sites that use it. And you will not make me become a person who does go to those sites, either through persuasion, or through shaming like you tried on that other post.
Unless you site is a gaming site or a funny movie site, I don't see a purpose to you having Flash at all.
For the most part, I ignore the Flash puzzle piece icons. Usually it's some unnecessary thing over on the side of the site. If I notice it, I'm usually glad I missed whatever was supposed to be there. Most of the time, there's not even anything missing from the site. But sometimes a site just contains one of those puzzle piece icons ... and I go somewhere else. Or email you, if I'm nice, and complain that I want to USE your site, not have a visually appealing experience.
I'll worry about making things look nice on my computer. You worry about having something I want to read, okay?
How can you NOT have flash installed. There are many legit sites that include flash.
There is one site I would desperately like to get more out of, but Flash hinders that. I expect them to wise up in time.
It provides much more functionality than straight HTML pages.
But nothing I want.
You can include Video and sound.
I don't want it. If I want video or sound, I want it as a downloadable media file.
You're not restricted to the page placement limitations of HTML pages.
I don't want that in HTML pages I read. You are talking about things that site authors want, not site readers.
You can create full functional applications with Flash where you cannot do the same with HTML.
But I don't want that.
If you're not installing flash because a few bad apples cause popup ads to appear, then you're totally missing out what Today's Net can do.
I'm not installing Flash because I don't want all the whizbang stuff it does.
Say hello to the 1990's for me.
So if you can't succeed in persuading us that we want the features Flash offers when we know we don't, you'll try to make us feel old-fashioned and foolish? You can't persuade us, so you'll try to shame us? I'm sorry, but that just sounds silly.
I won't cuss you out like one of your other respondants did, but I agree with his point that we don't want the stuff Flash offers.
The only value I have gotten from Flash is funny presentations like the recent JibJab movies. Some other people also like some of the Flash games. But again, I just want to download video files to watch. I don't want the entire web to consist of them.
Let me reiterate again: I do not want the functionality that you brag about Flash providing.
How many people are going to keep blocking ads until one of their site goes down from costs, then will they realise?
I seriously doubt that ad-funded sites are going to go away entirely. But even if they did, it would just mean the world would change. Something different would emerge. Sites funded through user fees. Sites funded by voluntary donation. Sites funded solely through the goodwill of the site owner.
At the moment we have a rich ecology of internet sites with a mixture of all four of these types (ad-funded, owner-funded, subscriber-funded, donation-funded) as well as other paradigms and mixtures of the above. I don't think it would be any particular crisis if the ad-funded genus disappeared, but I don't think it is likely to happen, anyway.
I just installed Filterset.G for Adblock, and the first link I clicked on to test was Slashdot, and I see this story.
Did some research today on previous April Fools' Days here at Slashdot. Slashdot has been deliberately posting dupes on April 1st in order to make fun of their tendency to post dupes since at least 1998 or 1999.
And people were griping and missing the jokes back then, too. :)
Ah, yes. All the mechanism has to do is make sure that it only reverses mutations that have the Evil Bit set.