I heard a *rumor* (I.e. word of mouth, not something I read on a site or anything) that MS lost a lawsuit that had to do with running executables from a web page. For some reason (surprise) MS got sued and nobody else did.
I'm not trying to propogate the rumor (again, I have very little reason to believe it), but I am curious if anybody elsehas either a.) heard this rumor b.) knows if it's true/untrue.
Im sure it's POSSIBLE to remove IE from Windows, but man I sure don't trust MS to do it. In IE 6, they removed support for Netscape Style Plugins, yet when you have that type of plug-in in the plugins folder it still installs itself into the registry and tries to run as a mime type. In other words, they turned off one feature but not another.
If they won't take the time to implement a good solution for removing NS Style Plug-ins, I can only imagine the half assed job MS'd do of removing IE.
I wouldn't mind if I could put a 'wishlist' somewhere like 'I want a DVD burner under $300' and have ads served up for an offer like that if somebody has it.
I've thought about it, but most of the 'slugfests' show up when I've made a seemingly innocent comment. This whole debate started with somebody asking why they were using.RM instead of.MP3, and I provided a simple answer. My simple answer was mutated by other people into something I didn't say. So I had to clarify myself, which I don't feel is something I should turn off my +1 for.
I think you're right there. How about if a Mod is made, they have to enter a reason as to why, or at least if it's moidded down. That way people can make their own judgement as to why it was modded down. I wonder how people'd respond to my posts if they saw "Flamebait: Doesn't hate Microsoft."
Another option is to use 'plain text' instead of HTML. Then when you hit enter you get line breaks, similar to notepad. (now you all know why I only copy/paste links instead of using HTML for them:P)
Err, if I buy a Gateway machine, I'm not presented with a EULA to accept.. am I? *tries to remember* When I got my laptop, it had Win95 installed and ready to go, I never had to accept anything.
Yah but what do I do when a moderator carries out a vendetta? Did you see that image I linked to? I lost a bunch of Karma over that. I tried meta-moderation, but it says I'm not qualified. (heh I really should invest more time into looking into that...)
Nobody was particularly willing to help me with that either. I did post a couple of followups and I was modded as off topic (more karma lost). If a moderator had come in and said "ah, i see, somebody modded a bunch of your posts down unfairly, ill just mod them back up again." I wouldn't be whining.
Let's say that MS shows up at my door and says "We want to audit your machines". What would happen if I just slammed the door in their faces? What right do they have to audit anybody?
Note: I'm not talking specifcially about schools, but rather a business that presumably has made no contractual deals with them.
I'm not a content producer, simply an animator who likes playing with compression tools. Their tools for making.RM files are pretty cool, though overly friendly.
Their server stuff's pretty cool too. That's not the same as thinking they should be used for anything, though heh. You might laugh at me for this, but for low bit-rate stuff, I usually prefer MS's Media Tools. However, for the high quality stuff, I much prefer Quicktime.
Understand though, my definition of cool is "Neat! I made a small file and the output's pretty good." I don't mean it like "Neat! I can use this on my site and everybody'll be happy!" I hope that clarifies my stance a bit heh.
Real was fun to play with, but it lost a bunch of points for it's viewer. Although, if I wanted to be sneaky, I could use their ActiveX control and bypass a bunch of their stuff....
I would agree with you if it were the people submitting the stories writing the stories. But Slashdot is mainly a table of contents for stories around the web. At best, what Slashdot provides is a teaser for the story plus a place to comment on it. I guess that's why I don't weigh grammar too heavily on that part of the site. Do you see my point?
One thing I do have a problem with is that sometimes a story gets posted, but is factually incorrect in the headlines, and you have to really read and interpret the story it's linked to in order to find out what really happened. For example, the statement 'Microsoft Kicks Sony out of CeBit' really bothered me when I found out that that isn't what happened at all.
I'm having a bit of a dilemma. I'm happy to pay Slashdot in order to keep it going, but sometimes a banner pops up that's interesting. I know it sounds silly, but like 3 times now I've seen a banner pertaining to something I was seeking. For example, I want an MP3 player that can play mini-CD's to travel with. *Gasp* I saw an ad for one at ThinkGeek.com, and now I'm considering purchasing it.
So if I get the subscription, I lose the ads. I guess Slashdot wins either way, but if I pay for Slashdot I'd like to get a little bit more benefit than just no ads.
One idea is that I'd like to see who mods me down. I think somebody'd be more careful about modding me down as troll when they know that I know who's doing it. Here's an example:
http://www.nanogator.com/slashdot.jpg
See that, within 6 minutes I had several posts modded down as Troll. If you look up a bit you can see that my other posts take about 20 minutes in between to get moderated. Anybody else think this is a bit suspiscious?
I really don't care so much about getting modded down, but I do think the quality of the moderations would go up if some of the 'premium members' know who's doing it. Afterall, if I'm paying to visit the site *and* look at the ads, its less likely that I'm here to just cause trouble.
That's all it'd take for me. I'm not demanding typo-free articles (damn people are anal about that, heh) or anything like that. I'd just like my time spent contributing to Slashdot worth more.
Don't you think you're demanding a little too much? Who gives a flip about spelling errors or *gasp* links? That's a bit anal if you ask me. "Oh I couldn't read this because he said 'your' instead of 'you're'." $.02 per ad-free page view is not enough to make people spend extra time doing something silly like grammar checking. If you can understand what's being said, then the service is being provided to you.
I see the opinions of Trolls have greatly evolved in the last few months. Your response was certainly more educated than 'fag'. Too bad you didn't take the time to clarify the nature of your complaint.
"The content providers (you/NPR) fail to understand or ignore..."
You're acting like I'm promoting Real. I'm not. My original post was an answer to the question "Why are they using Real Audio format and not MP3?" And I responded that it was probably because of Real's streaming features. Some people mixed that up with me supporting Real. My comments about the content side of it were in response to somebody calling me and idiot because they thought I loved Real's viewer. I was trying to point out there is more to Real than just the viewer.
You don't have to convince me that Real's player is a nuisance. I never ever said "They are in the right for using Real", nor did I ever say "they should only use Real and no other format!". I'm not proposing that anybody use it. I was simply answering somebody's question 'why?'. As for the user base, NPR is probably assuming that most people are idiots. Real Player is part of nearly every machine out there, whether it's prepackaged when you buy it, or it comes along when you download Netscape. The more advanced computer user probably doesn't have Real, but you can bet Aunt Sally has it since Gateway computers come with it, for example. And that's what NPR wants.
Should NPR support other formats? Oh I certainly think so. But the issues of 'non-standard' don't mean shit to Aunt Sally. She just wants to hear the program. That's who NPR is going after.
Please do not confuse my explaining NPR's point of view as support for Real's Viewer. I'm getting really sick of getting flamed for something I did not say. It really bugs me that people are judging me for simply answering a question.
I admit I was heated there, but I made a pretty good point. Some of us would like to watch our TV shows without knowing what happens in the end. It's bad manners to just blurt it out.
I have no regrets about my complaint. Slashdot has been really good about reviewing movies etc without spoiling what'll happen, but what happened last night was really ignorant.
Mod me down for using the F-word if you like, but do *not* mod me down for saying "That aint't cool." Opinions are what Slashdot's all about.
Uh right. As if you wouldn't be pissed if something you wanted to see was spoiled too.
Let me tell you a little story, I work for a living. When ya work for a living, you want time to enjoy certain things. I wanted to enjoy watching X-Files. Slashdot blew it for me. End of story.
Could I do other stuff? Sure. But I can't do what I wanted to do because of an insensitive slashdot poster.
BTW, it's hypocritical to tell me ot find something more interesting to do when obviously you had time to respond to my post. Why don't you go do something constructive like pet a cat, take a walk, or even masterbate. At least with the latter you have something to show for it at the end. Instead of whining about my whining about it beoing spoilt, take stock of your life, and realize what a sad bastard you are for being a hypocrite.
GOD DAMN!! I don't care if I get modded down or not, this was fucking stupid!
X-Files isn't coming on for another half hour, yet the HEADLINE to this article spoiled it!
Let me all give you a piece of advice on etiquette: Any time there's a movie or a TV show that people haven't seen yet, DON'T SPOIL IT! Show some consideration! It's okay to review it, just make sure we don't accidentally run across it. At least say 'spoilers ahead!'
I can't believe I have to epxlain it! Thanks alot!
"he wants the kids involved so they stick through all 3 new movies and hopefully watch the other 3."
Don't forget that Star Wars movies = release of some really cool toys. Go to your local Toys R Us and see what companies such as LEgo are doing with Star Wars. It's pretty impressive.
I have no doubt that Lucas had kids in mind when he made Jar Jar. He even said so in this month's Issue of Maxim.
Is this a bad thing? I agree that Star Wars would be more interesting if it were geared more towards the adult world, but the kids spend more money on it after the fact. The truth is that we can fully expect more kiddie stuff as Star Wars trickles out. Look at the preview for AotC. Anybody catch the flying R2D2 scene?
There is some hope, though. Older people are buying more video games these days. It's possible we'll see Star Wars tuned more to the adult audience in the next couple of movies, because now the older people have a reason to buy Star Wars merchandise.
At least that's what I'm hoping for. I'm not holding my breath, though. When I see AotC, I fully expect to see some silly moments that'll make the kids cheer. The best I can do is try to enjoy it. I know I thought the Ewoks were cool when I was 6.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, nice Fight club reference.
I heard a *rumor* (I.e. word of mouth, not something I read on a site or anything) that MS lost a lawsuit that had to do with running executables from a web page. For some reason (surprise) MS got sued and nobody else did.
I'm not trying to propogate the rumor (again, I have very little reason to believe it), but I am curious if anybody elsehas either a.) heard this rumor b.) knows if it's true/untrue.
"I would just rather not see arguments nested 10-deep when I'm reading at +2. "
:)
Hmmm... never thought about that. I'll try to be more considerate in the future.
"We know you can separate IE from Windows"
Im sure it's POSSIBLE to remove IE from Windows, but man I sure don't trust MS to do it. In IE 6, they removed support for Netscape Style Plugins, yet when you have that type of plug-in in the plugins folder it still installs itself into the registry and tries to run as a mime type. In other words, they turned off one feature but not another.
If they won't take the time to implement a good solution for removing NS Style Plug-ins, I can only imagine the half assed job MS'd do of removing IE.
I wouldn't mind if I could put a 'wishlist' somewhere like 'I want a DVD burner under $300' and have ads served up for an offer like that if somebody has it.
Heh that'd be kinda cool.
I've thought about it, but most of the 'slugfests' show up when I've made a seemingly innocent comment. This whole debate started with somebody asking why they were using .RM instead of .MP3, and I provided a simple answer. My simple answer was mutated by other people into something I didn't say. So I had to clarify myself, which I don't feel is something I should turn off my +1 for.
:P
I did it this time tho.
I think you're right there. How about if a Mod is made, they have to enter a reason as to why, or at least if it's moidded down. That way people can make their own judgement as to why it was modded down. I wonder how people'd respond to my posts if they saw "Flamebait: Doesn't hate Microsoft."
Another option is to use 'plain text' instead of HTML. Then when you hit enter you get line breaks, similar to notepad. (now you all know why I only copy/paste links instead of using HTML for them :P)
Err, if I buy a Gateway machine, I'm not presented with a EULA to accept.. am I? *tries to remember* When I got my laptop, it had Win95 installed and ready to go, I never had to accept anything.
Yah but what do I do when a moderator carries out a vendetta? Did you see that image I linked to? I lost a bunch of Karma over that. I tried meta-moderation, but it says I'm not qualified. (heh I really should invest more time into looking into that...)
Nobody was particularly willing to help me with that either. I did post a couple of followups and I was modded as off topic (more karma lost). If a moderator had come in and said "ah, i see, somebody modded a bunch of your posts down unfairly, ill just mod them back up again." I wouldn't be whining.
Let's say that MS shows up at my door and says "We want to audit your machines". What would happen if I just slammed the door in their faces? What right do they have to audit anybody?
Note: I'm not talking specifcially about schools, but rather a business that presumably has made no contractual deals with them.
I would have read that if you had learned how to use line breaks.
I'm not a content producer, simply an animator who likes playing with compression tools. Their tools for making .RM files are pretty cool, though overly friendly.
Their server stuff's pretty cool too. That's not the same as thinking they should be used for anything, though heh. You might laugh at me for this, but for low bit-rate stuff, I usually prefer MS's Media Tools. However, for the high quality stuff, I much prefer Quicktime.
Understand though, my definition of cool is "Neat! I made a small file and the output's pretty good." I don't mean it like "Neat! I can use this on my site and everybody'll be happy!" I hope that clarifies my stance a bit heh.
Real was fun to play with, but it lost a bunch of points for it's viewer. Although, if I wanted to be sneaky, I could use their ActiveX control and bypass a bunch of their stuff....
I would agree with you if it were the people submitting the stories writing the stories. But Slashdot is mainly a table of contents for stories around the web. At best, what Slashdot provides is a teaser for the story plus a place to comment on it. I guess that's why I don't weigh grammar too heavily on that part of the site. Do you see my point?
One thing I do have a problem with is that sometimes a story gets posted, but is factually incorrect in the headlines, and you have to really read and interpret the story it's linked to in order to find out what really happened. For example, the statement 'Microsoft Kicks Sony out of CeBit' really bothered me when I found out that that isn't what happened at all.
I'm having a bit of a dilemma. I'm happy to pay Slashdot in order to keep it going, but sometimes a banner pops up that's interesting. I know it sounds silly, but like 3 times now I've seen a banner pertaining to something I was seeking. For example, I want an MP3 player that can play mini-CD's to travel with. *Gasp* I saw an ad for one at ThinkGeek.com, and now I'm considering purchasing it.
So if I get the subscription, I lose the ads. I guess Slashdot wins either way, but if I pay for Slashdot I'd like to get a little bit more benefit than just no ads.
One idea is that I'd like to see who mods me down. I think somebody'd be more careful about modding me down as troll when they know that I know who's doing it. Here's an example:
http://www.nanogator.com/slashdot.jpg
See that, within 6 minutes I had several posts modded down as Troll. If you look up a bit you can see that my other posts take about 20 minutes in between to get moderated. Anybody else think this is a bit suspiscious?
I really don't care so much about getting modded down, but I do think the quality of the moderations would go up if some of the 'premium members' know who's doing it. Afterall, if I'm paying to visit the site *and* look at the ads, its less likely that I'm here to just cause trouble.
That's all it'd take for me. I'm not demanding typo-free articles (damn people are anal about that, heh) or anything like that. I'd just like my time spent contributing to Slashdot worth more.
"No problem. Then you won't get my subscription."
Don't you think you're demanding a little too much? Who gives a flip about spelling errors or *gasp* links? That's a bit anal if you ask me. "Oh I couldn't read this because he said 'your' instead of 'you're'." $.02 per ad-free page view is not enough to make people spend extra time doing something silly like grammar checking. If you can understand what's being said, then the service is being provided to you.
"loser"
I see the opinions of Trolls have greatly evolved in the last few months. Your response was certainly more educated than 'fag'. Too bad you didn't take the time to clarify the nature of your complaint.
"The content providers (you/NPR) fail to understand or ignore..."
You're acting like I'm promoting Real. I'm not. My original post was an answer to the question "Why are they using Real Audio format and not MP3?" And I responded that it was probably because of Real's streaming features. Some people mixed that up with me supporting Real. My comments about the content side of it were in response to somebody calling me and idiot because they thought I loved Real's viewer. I was trying to point out there is more to Real than just the viewer.
You don't have to convince me that Real's player is a nuisance. I never ever said "They are in the right for using Real", nor did I ever say "they should only use Real and no other format!". I'm not proposing that anybody use it. I was simply answering somebody's question 'why?'. As for the user base, NPR is probably assuming that most people are idiots. Real Player is part of nearly every machine out there, whether it's prepackaged when you buy it, or it comes along when you download Netscape. The more advanced computer user probably doesn't have Real, but you can bet Aunt Sally has it since Gateway computers come with it, for example. And that's what NPR wants.
Should NPR support other formats? Oh I certainly think so. But the issues of 'non-standard' don't mean shit to Aunt Sally. She just wants to hear the program. That's who NPR is going after.
Please do not confuse my explaining NPR's point of view as support for Real's Viewer. I'm getting really sick of getting flamed for something I did not say. It really bugs me that people are judging me for simply answering a question.
I admit I was heated there, but I made a pretty good point. Some of us would like to watch our TV shows without knowing what happens in the end. It's bad manners to just blurt it out.
I have no regrets about my complaint. Slashdot has been really good about reviewing movies etc without spoiling what'll happen, but what happened last night was really ignorant.
Mod me down for using the F-word if you like, but do *not* mod me down for saying "That aint't cool." Opinions are what Slashdot's all about.
"Keep pouting. It really suits you."
Yah, real good burn man. Only Jackie from that 70's Show could have delivered it better.
Uh right. As if you wouldn't be pissed if something you wanted to see was spoiled too.
Let me tell you a little story, I work for a living. When ya work for a living, you want time to enjoy certain things. I wanted to enjoy watching X-Files. Slashdot blew it for me. End of story.
Could I do other stuff? Sure. But I can't do what I wanted to do because of an insensitive slashdot poster.
BTW, it's hypocritical to tell me ot find something more interesting to do when obviously you had time to respond to my post. Why don't you go do something constructive like pet a cat, take a walk, or even masterbate. At least with the latter you have something to show for it at the end. Instead of whining about my whining about it beoing spoilt, take stock of your life, and realize what a sad bastard you are for being a hypocrite.
No, not trolling. Misinformed maybe, but im not trying to cause trouble.
What player plays these with variable bit rate features?
"It's ok, your just slow. Let me simplify it for you."
Err okay. Pardon me for knowing more about Real's delivery system than just their player.
If you had any idea what it's like making and publishing Real content, then you'd have a higher opinion of Real than that.
I think their viewer is awful, but the rest of it is pretty cool. Try making some actual content with it, and you will likely agree with me.
GOD DAMN!! I don't care if I get modded down or not, this was fucking stupid!
X-Files isn't coming on for another half hour, yet the HEADLINE to this article spoiled it!
Let me all give you a piece of advice on etiquette: Any time there's a movie or a TV show that people haven't seen yet, DON'T SPOIL IT! Show some consideration! It's okay to review it, just make sure we don't accidentally run across it. At least say 'spoilers ahead!'
I can't believe I have to epxlain it! Thanks alot!
Thanks for the info. :)
"he wants the kids involved so they stick through all 3 new movies and hopefully watch the other 3."
Don't forget that Star Wars movies = release of some really cool toys. Go to your local Toys R Us and see what companies such as LEgo are doing with Star Wars. It's pretty impressive.
I have no doubt that Lucas had kids in mind when he made Jar Jar. He even said so in this month's Issue of Maxim.
Is this a bad thing? I agree that Star Wars would be more interesting if it were geared more towards the adult world, but the kids spend more money on it after the fact. The truth is that we can fully expect more kiddie stuff as Star Wars trickles out. Look at the preview for AotC. Anybody catch the flying R2D2 scene?
There is some hope, though. Older people are buying more video games these days. It's possible we'll see Star Wars tuned more to the adult audience in the next couple of movies, because now the older people have a reason to buy Star Wars merchandise.
At least that's what I'm hoping for. I'm not holding my breath, though. When I see AotC, I fully expect to see some silly moments that'll make the kids cheer. The best I can do is try to enjoy it. I know I thought the Ewoks were cool when I was 6.