I would think if I was an employee at this company, I'd start to wonder just when we were going to start installing anything.. for pete's sake, you can't tell me the employees didn't have a clue what was going on, unless of course they were too busy bidding on figurines at eBay, and watching their Enron stock plummet....
Good point. If I might talk out of my a$$ for a moment:
Window$(TM)® will become 'free' as soon as.net is in a usable state. I believe they will go to a subscription service. There is nothing that Bill would like more than having Window$(TM)® used like electricity, water, cable, satellite, isp or (ha) garbage services. You'll get a bill every month; don't pay the bill, and no Window$(TM)® for you (and no computer). He is hoping that people will suck this up, 'cause hell! everything else is subscription based...may include features of PVR. Most likely off-site storage would be favored, since control of content would be with MS. Hardware copy protection would be moot, since everything would be installed though MS. (No way to install anything on site)
These suppositions assume that broadband will be widely available, and probably bundled w/ Window$(TM)® (MSN) MS will market this as easy to use! (MS will remotely repair and admin installs) and use passport for security (whoohoohaha....snif.) The more MS can push the death of the 'PC' as it stands now the better off they are.
The return of the network appliance?
Let me wake up from these nightmare visions! Ahhh! Ahhhh!
Where does the basement musician or unsigned artist fit into all of this? If I want to spread my own music far and wide, I should be able to. It sounds like this right is being taken away from me. Will only the 'signed' artists be able to be distributed? As all ideas from the Industry, content and distribution control remains with them, and leaves the 'little' guy to 10 times the work, and nothing to show for it.
seriously, if I see one more of these I'm going to reach though the monitor and strangle someone.
I'd say my personal favorite things are:
Consistent graphics - size your pictures to the size you want them viewed at. I went to a band homepage with a 4 meg jpeg. Uh no.
Consistent color scheme - single color background, complementary colors. (Easy to read!)
Poor user interfaces - If I can't figure your site out in 5 seconds, I'm off to Google.
Banner Ads - As long as they are unobtusive, (slashdot) I don't mind. If I find myself in the land of 10,000 banners, I'm gone. Make sure the ones you have are actually geared towards the site's info. eg - Hardware review site=no increase size of my software, thanks
Don't use 900 different fonts. Use fonts and font sizes to set sections apart, not sentences. Don't underline unless it's a link.
Animated GIFs - a personal pet peeve, especially 'Under Construction' digging dudes and dancing hamsters
Please check your links often, and update oftener! Nothing sucks as much as a site that's been dead for 2 years. If it's dead, put a bullet in it and take it down!
Real Audio(TM) - Just say no. I will not use the resource sucking, HD bloating, Info-Grabbing crap, and neither should you.
Test on every browser on every platform you can, not just the latest or your personal favorite.
No embedded MIDI. Ever. Period.
Just a couple off the top of my head...for real examples of what not to do, SomethingAwful has a good selection of sites. Plus, Photoshop Phriday is a hoot!
It renders slashdot about twice as fast as IE, and the tab feature is Great! (tab between slashdot, email, and apple.slashdot) and I couldn't find any problems rendering any site, except it wouldn't accept input in text fields. As long as your going on a click-fest, and don't need to enter anything, it's pretty swell.
Agreed. Impose term limits on everyone! If a Senator is prevented from sitting in his office forever, the number of anti-freedom, pro-business laws can be cut down to a trickle. Since when does an 80+ year old Dumb-Ass represent me?
Secondly, far too much legislation is going on with no point beyond making these tax money toilets look busy. Career politicians should be dumped out of office and have to work at Walmart for the same number of years they wasted in public office making worthless laws. That way we are sure they know what life is like for the bulk of the population.
Thirdly, how many people vote? Politicians don't want you to vote. They will tell you what you want to hear to get into office, then suck on the corporate/public teat for 35 years, occassionally popping up to rant about an unimportant public issue (so Joe Public can say 'good job, Senator Dick Head!') Learn about the issues, educate others, and Vote!
I will introduce a bill. Six year term limits, mandatory voting (crazy, I know!) and all canadates for office (ANY party) get to spend exactly the same amount of money, Television coverage, and a web site with all issues clearly spelled out for each canadate. Time for our government to represent the people and not Business.
sigh.
...and when Joe the Intern decided to use the DNA sample marked 'the banjo playing kid from "Deliverance" he had no idea that he would be working at Burger Hut the very next year.
Wow. I remember when I first saw the picture with the all the galaxies in National Geographic. Just glancing at it, it looked like another 'bunch a stars' picture; then I looked closer and saw galaxies. Infinite galaxies receding into the distance. Nothing has ever blown my mind like that, before or since. Here's a link to some photos and here's the photo I'm talking about...
People don't want to listen to Britney Spears, they want to have sex with Britney Spears.
A problem as I see it is in the quality of material written for these artists. You know how a 'hit' gets written? 'Professional' writers. They crank out song after song after song. They know all the tricks, the hooks, the way to make the chorus stand out (repeat, repeat repeat repeat). They all know these 'methods'. That's why all of this mass marketed fast food music sounds the same. People as a whole, are lazy and have no taste of their own. Hours of watching tv (buy this, this IS cool!), listening to the radio "the newest HIT by 'XXX'", (after it's been on max rotation for 3 weeks), reading People Magazine only contributes to this. Most people want to be 'in the club' and are scared to have opinons. Happily there is a giant Industry here to tell us what to feel, think, buy, etc.
Whew. Anyhow I don't listen to music on the radio or TV, I have purchased 4-5 CDs in the last 5-6 years, and will absoulutely refuse, to the point of leaving the room, listen to songs that were not written by the artist..
If Micro$oft dosn't attack Lycoris (it starts with an 'L') with thousands of laywers, get their email list, and cold call everyone on it with, "We see you've been enjoying a pirated version of Windows XP, how would you like to *Upgrade to the real thing?" BTW, How many geeks are going to install this and then hide it when their friend is over? The biggest "oh no never" geeks probably; worse than gettin' caught with a dirty mag by Mom....
Amen, Brother - making a dent by physically making a change will do more than 100+ posts about the need to make a change. Education (explain why.doc format is poor for interoperabillity) or subterfuge (storytime! -.doc format carries viruses, is racist, forwards private data to MS, wants to sleep w/ your sister) = no more.doc = much happier Mac, Linux, & even windows users!
Still no localtalk support and none in sight.
IYAM, the forced upgrade to usb/network printers will do more to keep power users in 9.2.1 than anything else. I love OSx, but I still can't print.:P Isn't there some BSD geek out there who wants to have a statue erected in his/her honor? Bring localtalk to to OSx!
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft has already purchased 98% of the future address space. But you can have 192.168.0.4.
I would think if I was an employee at this company, I'd start to wonder just when we were going to start installing anything.. for pete's sake, you can't tell me the employees didn't have a clue what was going on, unless of course they were too busy bidding on figurines at eBay, and watching their Enron stock plummet....
Google is your friend!
Window$(TM)® will become 'free' as soon as .net is in a usable state. I believe they will go to a subscription service. There is nothing that Bill would like more than having Window$(TM)® used like electricity, water, cable, satellite, isp or (ha) garbage services. You'll get a bill every month; don't pay the bill, and no Window$(TM)® for you (and no computer). He is hoping that people will suck this up, 'cause hell! everything else is subscription based...may include features of PVR. Most likely off-site storage would be favored, since control of content would be with MS. Hardware copy protection would be moot, since everything would be installed though MS. (No way to install anything on site)
These suppositions assume that broadband will be widely available, and probably bundled w/ Window$(TM)® (MSN) MS will market this as easy to use! (MS will remotely repair and admin installs) and use passport for security (whoohoohaha....snif.) The more MS can push the death of the 'PC' as it stands now the better off they are.
The return of the network appliance?
Let me wake up from these nightmare visions! Ahhh! Ahhhh!
Where does the basement musician or unsigned artist fit into all of this? If I want to spread my own music far and wide, I should be able to. It sounds like this right is being taken away from me. Will only the 'signed' artists be able to be distributed? As all ideas from the Industry, content and distribution control remains with them, and leaves the 'little' guy to 10 times the work, and nothing to show for it.
I'd say my personal favorite things are:
Consistent graphics - size your pictures to the size you want them viewed at. I went to a band homepage with a 4 meg jpeg. Uh no.
Consistent color scheme - single color background, complementary colors. (Easy to read!)
Poor user interfaces - If I can't figure your site out in 5 seconds, I'm off to Google.
Banner Ads - As long as they are unobtusive, (slashdot) I don't mind. If I find myself in the land of 10,000 banners, I'm gone. Make sure the ones you have are actually geared towards the site's info. eg - Hardware review site=no increase size of my software, thanks
Don't use 900 different fonts. Use fonts and font sizes to set sections apart, not sentences. Don't underline unless it's a link.
Animated GIFs - a personal pet peeve, especially 'Under Construction' digging dudes and dancing hamsters
Please check your links often, and update oftener! Nothing sucks as much as a site that's been dead for 2 years. If it's dead, put a bullet in it and take it down!
Real Audio(TM) - Just say no. I will not use the resource sucking, HD bloating, Info-Grabbing crap, and neither should you.
Test on every browser on every platform you can, not just the latest or your personal favorite.
No embedded MIDI. Ever. Period.
Just a couple off the top of my head...for real examples of what not to do, SomethingAwful has a good selection of sites. Plus, Photoshop Phriday is a hoot!
Enough!
It renders slashdot about twice as fast as IE, and the tab feature is Great! (tab between slashdot, email, and apple.slashdot) and I couldn't find any problems rendering any site, except it wouldn't accept input in text fields. As long as your going on a click-fest, and don't need to enter anything, it's pretty swell.
Secondly, far too much legislation is going on with no point beyond making these tax money toilets look busy. Career politicians should be dumped out of office and have to work at Walmart for the same number of years they wasted in public office making worthless laws. That way we are sure they know what life is like for the bulk of the population.
Thirdly, how many people vote? Politicians don't want you to vote. They will tell you what you want to hear to get into office, then suck on the corporate/public teat for 35 years, occassionally popping up to rant about an unimportant public issue (so Joe Public can say 'good job, Senator Dick Head!') Learn about the issues, educate others, and Vote!
I will introduce a bill. Six year term limits, mandatory voting (crazy, I know!) and all canadates for office (ANY party) get to spend exactly the same amount of money, Television coverage, and a web site with all issues clearly spelled out for each canadate. Time for our government to represent the people and not Business. sigh.
...and when Joe the Intern decided to use the DNA sample marked 'the banjo playing kid from "Deliverance" he had no idea that he would be working at Burger Hut the very next year.
A problem as I see it is in the quality of material written for these artists. You know how a 'hit' gets written? 'Professional' writers. They crank out song after song after song. They know all the tricks, the hooks, the way to make the chorus stand out (repeat, repeat repeat repeat). They all know these 'methods'. That's why all of this mass marketed fast food music sounds the same. People as a whole, are lazy and have no taste of their own. Hours of watching tv (buy this, this IS cool!), listening to the radio "the newest HIT by 'XXX'", (after it's been on max rotation for 3 weeks), reading People Magazine only contributes to this. Most people want to be 'in the club' and are scared to have opinons. Happily there is a giant Industry here to tell us what to feel, think, buy, etc.
Whew. Anyhow I don't listen to music on the radio or TV, I have purchased 4-5 CDs in the last 5-6 years, and will absoulutely refuse, to the point of leaving the room, listen to songs that were not written by the artist..
grrrr. Bring back music!
If Micro$oft dosn't attack Lycoris (it starts with an 'L') with thousands of laywers, get their email list, and cold call everyone on it with, "We see you've been enjoying a pirated version of Windows XP, how would you like to *Upgrade to the real thing?" BTW, How many geeks are going to install this and then hide it when their friend is over? The biggest "oh no never" geeks probably; worse than gettin' caught with a dirty mag by Mom....
Amen, Brother - making a dent by physically making a change will do more than 100+ posts about the need to make a change. Education (explain why .doc format is poor for interoperabillity) or subterfuge (storytime! - .doc format carries viruses, is racist, forwards private data to MS, wants to sleep w/ your sister) = no more .doc = much happier Mac, Linux, & even windows users!
Still no localtalk support and none in sight. IYAM, the forced upgrade to usb/network printers will do more to keep power users in 9.2.1 than anything else. I love OSx, but I still can't print. :P Isn't there some BSD geek out there who wants to have a statue erected in his/her honor? Bring localtalk to to OSx!
So could os9 'classic' be run on a Net/Free box?
I belive the new name of the company is 'Me'
I can finally show the world! I have the windows source code right here! 10 GOTO 20 20 GOTO 10 30 REM BILL RULEZ! Please don't abuse it.