Tomorrow morning I think I'll go out and shoot a certain someone who's pissed me off (don't worry, I'm only kidding;)
But I hereby give advance notice that this act is copyright "mice elf" and anyone wishing to report it using any currently available broadcast medium (TV/Radio/Intermaweb/Papyrus/Talking about it over a garden fence) will have to pay me X billion dollars/euros/pounds/"whatever I feel like charging for it" (where X is a rapidly increasing sum depending on how many "0"s I can be bothered typing ony my keyboard...).
Hmm... "Intellectual copyright"... I saw the sun today, if you want to look at it tomorrow you owe me 50 new pence.
Ho ho fucking ho. No wonder Humans will soon (on a geological timescale) be extinct.
Their root kit fiasco really was the last straw. Over the last years their entire raison d'etre seems to be to lock you into their products. Mainly by using their own crappy, non standard, proprietary formats (minidisc... atrac... memory stick etc. etc.) whilst staunchly refusng to support any sort of standard format.
Every time something appears on the market Sony makes something slightly different which is incompatible with everything else. But then they pulled the root kit trick and tried to start owning peoples Windows based computers like some 13 year old wannabe "crackers".
What are they going to do next ? start DDOSing competitors websites ? start writing XBox viruses ? Nothing this bunch of low life scumbags do will suprise me.
So I say to Sony the corporation. Fuck You. Go crawl in a hole and die.
I'll never buy another thing from them as long as I live.
And if I see Flash (or at least the rotten yellow bar that tells me the page has Flash on it) then my fingers hit Ctrl & W before I can think about it (which quite often annoys me when I've only got the one tab open;)
Well this is all well and good but if they're doing any work relating to plugins such as Flash then I wish they'd devote some time to fixing the plugin manager.
I'm one of those users who have no use for Flash. Absolutely no use whatsoever. I tried it, got really sick of nauseous animated advertising and removed it. It's not coming back on my box ever.
So now every time I go to a page with Flash on it Firefox lets me know this by putting a prominent yellow bar at the top of the page telling me I "NEED" to install a plugin. No thankyou, I do not "NEED" to install the plugin, I do not want the plugin.
So I have some questions for any Firefox devs who may care to read this post.
1 Why is this done in such an obnoxious manner ? There should be a small icon in the status bar to inform me of missing plugins, not a dirty great piece of page vandalism.
2 Why can't I switch this behaviour off ? I've tried the about:config "plugin.default_plugin_disabled" setting and it makes no difference.
3 Why doesn't the plugin manager behave like the popup blocker ? The popup blocker is a lovely feature which, after the first time it blocks a popup, just sits in the status bar quietly notifying me it's just blocked a popup. It's one of the main reasons I started using Firefox because it didn't get in the way.
Sadly after thinking I'd raise a bug about this it would appear that there are already several old entries in bugzilla asking for this to be fixed and the devs just don't seem to care.
Ho hum...
Just seems to prove the old management theory that if you leave coders to their own devices they'll just go off and work on new and interesting things rather than do the boring work of fixing bugs that the users want fixing.
Firefox: Fantastic. Firefox's Plugin Manager: Bag O'Shite.
Well if we were all reasonable peole that's the sort of things we could work towards;) But given human nature then here are just a couple of questions I just thought of:
1) How would the tax be levied ? Some people might not "consume" ANY entertainment or software. Should they have to pay too ? Maybe you're thinking of taxing "any device capable of being used to view content" ? then what about people who are buying said devices to only view content they themselves have created ? (e.g. home camcorder movie playback)
2) How are you going to count third party deliveries ? e.g. I get a couple of songs/programs I like and pass them on. THe person I pass them on to passes them on to two frieds etc. until 10 people have enjoyed the thing. So the person who wrote the stuff should really be getting 10 "votes" counted against their stuff but, because everyone beyond me got it via a friend, they've only got one "vote" logged.
3) Big companies would just set up automated swaetshops to keep "voting" for whatever crap they're pushing. So we'd stil lhave "top 10" charts full of crap taking the biggest piece of the pie.
>As long as there are 1's and 0's streaming through my monitor
Or a suitable location for me to point a (high quality) camcorder and microphones at a Hi-Def screen and hi-fi speakers.... Or (in the case of audio only) somewhere for me to place an A/D converter in the path of the analogue audio signal.
If a human can encrypt it, another human will find a way to decrypt it.
Trying to lock your data away will only ever have one result. You'll piss off the people who've paid to buy it. It'll deter copyright infringers (n.b. I don't confuse these folks with genuine high seas pirates:) who wish to make money from bootlegging your content for about 20 seconds whilst they try to remember which one of the gang is "the guy who deals with this format".
This is exactly the sort of thing I dreamed up in an earlier response to an *AA post (too lazy to go and link to it:)
The beauty of this sort of system is that, designed well, you'd be able to program your device to "listen out" for things you're currently interested in (this would rely on files being tagged with a bit more meta data than we get in current IDV3 tags etc.) With some sort of AI algorithm processing the tags you could also optionally allow the "pickup new music" function to take you off into new avenues of sonic exploration (Hmm... think I'll set the "weirdness factor" to 3 today). Hell I never knew how much I liked Bulgarian throat singing until I heard some on a radio station whilst cooking my tea:)
One thing's for sure though you'd soon find more good music than you'd probably have time to listen to - unless in the future you can get paid for being a "music filter" for a third paty (when most manufacturing ia automated new jobs will come into being...) And with digital transmission of the data the days of artificially induced shortages are over (ooh look, limited edition of 100 copies on BLUE VINYL !!!!)
So you make available what you please and passing people pick up what they please from you. Everyone gets to hear more music.
And what of the poor musicians I hear you say. In the future more bands will make more money than they do today from live performances, personal appearances, writing bespoke music for social events etc. etc. In an interconnected world there is now more opportunity for musicians/sound sculptors to both create works and to get paid for it. Admittedly there'll probably be less battery farmed, multi millionaire musicians producing trite pap (a la Britney Crap etc.) but there'll be more musicians earning a living.
Meanwhile the cavemen at the *AA etc. still just simply don't get it and are attempting to keep things going using their 1920s business paradigm.
11) Not having to be around idiots^H^H^H^H^H^H people.
Not having to deal with crowds of "consumer zombies" is the number one reason I now shop for practically everything online. If they're not blocking the aisles by standing 4 abreast in them whilst drool hangs out of their mouths as they stare vacantly at the latest retarded "singing arsehole" "novelty" item they're either backing into you, stepping across you (whilst attempting to read some packaging) or shouting about the amazing price of tomatoes into their fucking mobile phones.
And don't get me started about the screaming, ill mannered little bastards that pass as their children. Gassing is too good for 'em.
Contrast this with making a few mouse clicks whilst having a relaxing pint of beer in the comfort of my own home. Luxury:)
>I wouldn't be surprised to see Windows Messenger make its way into the mix considering its new PC-to-POTS capability
Hells teeth... I read that as "considering its new PC-to BOTS capability" Now I know Windows machines are partial to being Zombified but that would be ridiculous !
Personally I was not in the slightest bit suprised to read the headline (n.b. this is Slashdot so I haven't actually read the article or anything radical like that !)
The moral of the story is that Nature will always adapt no matter what us Humans do. Life will always find a way round the problems facing it. That's not to say we shouldn't try stuff out (we are questioning beings after all) but if we change conditions (via the introduction of weedkillers etc.) then eventually some sort of "stuff" will adapt to the new environment. You only need to look at how many bacteria are now resistant to antibiotics to see how things work out.
The only way we could stop life on Earth evolving to thrive in whatever conditions we create would be to blow the entire planet into little pieces. And even then I bet gravitational pull would eventually assemble some of those pieces back into a small "plantoid" which, if there were an observer to see it, would be seen to have some sort of life on it (evolved from some micro organism that was on one of the little fragments of Earth)
Natures bigger, badder, smarter, more cunning and tougher than all of the Humans that ever lived put together. We should see ourselves for what we are. A small temporary blip on the graph of "dominant species who lived on Earth".
So whilst I think the Monsantos of this world are a bunch of evil bastards who are trying to corner the world market for seed crops I'm not worried that they ever will. All that'll happen is that they fuck things up real bad for us humans. But nature won't care 'cause there's plenty more species waiting to take our place.
Or as an insect once said to me "Behold I am the mighty cockroach, give me 100 generations alone with them, and I can eat your poisons for lunch".
You started off well and genuinely seemed to be designed to help me control what I saw on that there intermaweb. You blocked popups and gave me control of what I viewed (courtesy of Ad Block etc.) You really did seem to want to let me "take back the web".
But now you keep insisting that "additional plugins are required to view this page". Sorry but I disagree. I don't REQUIRE any plugins. Sorry but I don't want Flash. I'm just not interested in viewing those Flash adverts. I'd rather those CPU cycles went to Seti@home instead. Hell I'd rather they went to Sony's rootkit than to some fucking retarded marketroid's idea of what a web advert whould look like.
If Firefox is helping me "take back the web" then why does it insist I REQUIRE Flash to be installed ? Sorry I just don't want it. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.
So whilst Firefox is still marginally better than IE (at least there's no Craptive-X in there) it's now a complete pain in the arse to use on any mainstream sites (i.e. anything with Flashvertising due to the following sequence of events:
"Additional plugins are..." clicks no thanks, clicks a link in the page, "Additional plugins are..." clicks no thanks, clicks a link in the page, "Additional plugins are..." clicks no thanks, clicks a link in the page
Gives up in disgust and goes back to the pub:)
Yet it started off with so much promise... Ho hum.
P.S. And no, setting "plugin.default_plugin_disabled" to false in about:config doesn't switch this off anymore so there.
>then do what this reader did and put in wrong information under those questions.
Good grief. As a matter of course you should supply incorrect details to all questions asked my marketers. In the words of the late great Bill Hicks these people are "Satan's little helpers" so no, you do not need to be polite to them. Nor are you obliged to give them ANY accurate information.
Whenever I get my hands on a questionnaire I fill it in with incorrect information and return it. When I get a marketing call then, if they're doing "market research", I give them totally, WILDLY inaccurate information ("yes I am a female and yes I earn 2,000 pounds a year") or, if they're trying to sell me something, I just tell them to fuck off. (And yes I am in the TPS but sometimes like to fuck with the bastards who ignore the list)
Hell I especially love telling double glazing salespeople to call round then when they show up I just tell them "no I'm not interested, but I just wanted to waste some of YOUR time like you do when you ring me when I'm home on MY time".
Fuck marketers, fuck advertising, fuck all that consumeroid crap.
So no there is no way you can be too paranoid about privacy. Give them an inch and they'll shaft you a mile. It is the duty of every sane human being to poison the marketroid database with false values. At each and every turn fill it with shit.
Surely Microsoft aren't adding a feature to Windows without giving thorough consideration as to how the feature will work in a multi user, internet connected, environment ?
After all they've show time and time again how much they cae about these things:)
And whilst you're promoting Exact Audio Copy don't forget to also mention the Uberstandard for mp3 rips. It's a damn good idea.
'cause there's nothing worse than badly encoded mp3s ! (oh alright getting a paper cut on your Glans would be far, far worse than a badly encoded mp3 but you know what I mean...)
Another thing that hacks me off with the Google is the amount of "compare prices" spam links that now appear in the results.
It seems that whenever I look for anything a large amount of the initial results are along the lines of "compare prices for [search terms]". It doesn't even matter what I'm searching for as these idiots seem to think I'm only using the internet for shopping. All in all a complete fucking waste of time and space.
Personally what I'd like to see is a plugin whereby I can blacklist certain sites so they either don't get returned in my results or they're at least stripped out before the page is rendered. Perhaps a Firefox plugin would be nice ?
But despite this I still prefer Google to any of the others (although not so much that I let them store cookies on my machine;)
Well I'm still using version 5.0 (the last pre Sony release) and I kept thinking I'd buy an upgrade when funds allowed (assuming of course I can actually get an upgrade from 5.0 to 7.0...)
But after Sonys rootkit fiasco I'm not buying anything from any of their divisions ever again. Never. No PS2, no hi-fi, no TV, nothing, nada.
What would be really nice is for the EU/South Korea etc. to force Microsoft to remove IE out of the core of the OS and to produce an installer that gave you full control over which additional programs you wish to install. That way I could install Windows without having to install all the crap I don't use such as IE, Media Player, Outlook (not to mention the myriad crappy services etc. etc.)
Personally I have to use Windows on one machine as I use it to run Logic Audio and Sound Forge and it bugs the hell out of me that every time I have to reinstall the bloody OS, or use Windows update, it wants to install all these crappy Microsoft programs/services that I simply don't want.
Well I haven't read the list (come on this is/. after all !) but I bet it doesn't contain my favourite namely "The Great Explosion" (which is actually a fleshed out version of "And Then There Were None") by Eric Frank Russell.
Absolutely brilliant bit of work and you can even read the shorter version online. Best link I can come up with at the moment is at abelard.org although I did once find a less "garish" (i.e. ad free) version which I now can't seem to track down.
Ah... if only more people had the sense to live like this:)
Slashdot Mirror
And then there's the number one reason for not using fingerprint recognition:
If I want your data that badly I'll simply cut your finger off.
Let's not forget the recent case of the Malaysian businessman who had his finger cut off by car thieves.
Biometric ID is a very, very bad, very, very stupid idea.
Tomorrow morning I think I'll go out and shoot a certain someone who's pissed me off (don't worry, I'm only kidding ;)
But I hereby give advance notice that this act is copyright "mice elf" and anyone wishing to report it using any currently available broadcast medium (TV/Radio/Intermaweb/Papyrus/Talking about it over a garden fence) will have to pay me X billion dollars/euros/pounds/"whatever I feel like charging for it" (where X is a rapidly increasing sum depending on how many "0"s I can be bothered typing ony my keyboard...).
Hmm... "Intellectual copyright"... I saw the sun today, if you want to look at it tomorrow you owe me 50 new pence.
Ho ho fucking ho. No wonder Humans will soon (on a geological timescale) be extinct.
I heartily concur.
Their root kit fiasco really was the last straw. Over the last years their entire raison d'etre seems to be to lock you into their products. Mainly by using their own crappy, non standard, proprietary formats (minidisc... atrac... memory stick etc. etc.) whilst staunchly refusng to support any sort of standard format.
Every time something appears on the market Sony makes something slightly different which is incompatible with everything else. But then they pulled the root kit trick and tried to start owning peoples Windows based computers like some 13 year old wannabe "crackers".
What are they going to do next ? start DDOSing competitors websites ? start writing XBox viruses ? Nothing this bunch of low life scumbags do will suprise me.
So I say to Sony the corporation. Fuck You. Go crawl in a hole and die.
I'll never buy another thing from them as long as I live.
>I think I remember predictions that by 2008 (????) the average internet user will transfer about 600MB per day..
Unless you block advertising and Flash in which case the figure drops to 600 Kb.
And if I see Flash (or at least the rotten yellow bar that tells me the page has Flash on it) then my fingers hit Ctrl & W before I can think about it (which quite often annoys me when I've only got the one tab open ;)
Well this is all well and good but if they're doing any work relating to plugins such as Flash then I wish they'd devote some time to fixing the plugin manager.
I'm one of those users who have no use for Flash. Absolutely no use whatsoever. I tried it, got really sick of nauseous animated advertising and removed it. It's not coming back on my box ever.
So now every time I go to a page with Flash on it Firefox lets me know this by putting a prominent yellow bar at the top of the page telling me I "NEED" to install a plugin. No thankyou, I do not "NEED" to install the plugin, I do not want the plugin.
So I have some questions for any Firefox devs who may care to read this post.
1 Why is this done in such an obnoxious manner ? There should be a small icon in the status bar to inform me of missing plugins, not a dirty great piece of page vandalism.
2 Why can't I switch this behaviour off ? I've tried the about:config "plugin.default_plugin_disabled" setting and it makes no difference.
3 Why doesn't the plugin manager behave like the popup blocker ? The popup blocker is a lovely feature which, after the first time it blocks a popup, just sits in the status bar quietly notifying me it's just blocked a popup. It's one of the main reasons I started using Firefox because it didn't get in the way.
Sadly after thinking I'd raise a bug about this it would appear that there are already several old entries in bugzilla asking for this to be fixed and the devs just don't seem to care.
Ho hum...
Just seems to prove the old management theory that if you leave coders to their own devices they'll just go off and work on new and interesting things rather than do the boring work of fixing bugs that the users want fixing.
Firefox: Fantastic.
Firefox's Plugin Manager: Bag O'Shite.
Well if we were all reasonable peole that's the sort of things we could work towards ;) But given human nature then here are just a couple of questions I just thought of:
1) How would the tax be levied ? Some people might not "consume" ANY entertainment or software. Should they have to pay too ? Maybe you're thinking of taxing "any device capable of being used to view content" ? then what about people who are buying said devices to only view content they themselves have created ? (e.g. home camcorder movie playback)
2) How are you going to count third party deliveries ? e.g. I get a couple of songs/programs I like and pass them on. THe person I pass them on to passes them on to two frieds etc. until 10 people have enjoyed the thing. So the person who wrote the stuff should really be getting 10 "votes" counted against their stuff but, because everyone beyond me got it via a friend, they've only got one "vote" logged.
3) Big companies would just set up automated swaetshops to keep "voting" for whatever crap they're pushing. So we'd stil lhave "top 10" charts full of crap taking the biggest piece of the pie.
Nice idea though.
>As long as there are 1's and 0's streaming through my monitor
:) who wish to make money from bootlegging your content for about 20 seconds whilst they try to remember which one of the gang is "the guy who deals with this format".
Or a suitable location for me to point a (high quality) camcorder and microphones at a Hi-Def screen and hi-fi speakers.... Or (in the case of audio only) somewhere for me to place an A/D converter in the path of the analogue audio signal.
If a human can encrypt it, another human will find a way to decrypt it.
Trying to lock your data away will only ever have one result. You'll piss off the people who've paid to buy it. It'll deter copyright infringers (n.b. I don't confuse these folks with genuine high seas pirates
DRM: Waste of time, bag o'shite.
This is exactly the sort of thing I dreamed up in an earlier response to an *AA post (too lazy to go and link to it :)
:)
The beauty of this sort of system is that, designed well, you'd be able to program your device to "listen out" for things you're currently interested in (this would rely on files being tagged with a bit more meta data than we get in current IDV3 tags etc.) With some sort of AI algorithm processing the tags you could also optionally allow the "pickup new music" function to take you off into new avenues of sonic exploration (Hmm... think I'll set the "weirdness factor" to 3 today). Hell I never knew how much I liked Bulgarian throat singing until I heard some on a radio station whilst cooking my tea
One thing's for sure though you'd soon find more good music than you'd probably have time to listen to - unless in the future you can get paid for being a "music filter" for a third paty (when most manufacturing ia automated new jobs will come into being...) And with digital transmission of the data the days of artificially induced shortages are over (ooh look, limited edition of 100 copies on BLUE VINYL !!!!)
So you make available what you please and passing people pick up what they please from you. Everyone gets to hear more music.
And what of the poor musicians I hear you say. In the future more bands will make more money than they do today from live performances, personal appearances, writing bespoke music for social events etc. etc. In an interconnected world there is now more opportunity for musicians/sound sculptors to both create works and to get paid for it. Admittedly there'll probably be less battery farmed, multi millionaire musicians producing trite pap (a la Britney Crap etc.) but there'll be more musicians earning a living.
Meanwhile the cavemen at the *AA etc. still just simply don't get it and are attempting to keep things going using their 1920s business paradigm.
Ho hum. Bring it on.
Yet another excellent reason for not installing the crap in the first place.
You forgot number 11:
:)
11) Not having to be around idiots^H^H^H^H^H^H people.
Not having to deal with crowds of "consumer zombies" is the number one reason I now shop for practically everything online. If they're not blocking the aisles by standing 4 abreast in them whilst drool hangs out of their mouths as they stare vacantly at the latest retarded "singing arsehole" "novelty" item they're either backing into you, stepping across you (whilst attempting to read some packaging) or shouting about the amazing price of tomatoes into their fucking mobile phones.
And don't get me started about the screaming, ill mannered little bastards that pass as their children. Gassing is too good for 'em.
Contrast this with making a few mouse clicks whilst having a relaxing pint of beer in the comfort of my own home. Luxury
>I wouldn't be surprised to see Windows Messenger make its way into the mix considering its new PC-to-POTS capability
Hells teeth... I read that as "considering its new PC-to BOTS capability" Now I know Windows machines are partial to being Zombified but that would be ridiculous !
Personally I was not in the slightest bit suprised to read the headline (n.b. this is Slashdot so I haven't actually read the article or anything radical like that !)
The moral of the story is that Nature will always adapt no matter what us Humans do. Life will always find a way round the problems facing it. That's not to say we shouldn't try stuff out (we are questioning beings after all) but if we change conditions (via the introduction of weedkillers etc.) then eventually some sort of "stuff" will adapt to the new environment. You only need to look at how many bacteria are now resistant to antibiotics to see how things work out.
The only way we could stop life on Earth evolving to thrive in whatever conditions we create would be to blow the entire planet into little pieces. And even then I bet gravitational pull would eventually assemble some of those pieces back into a small "plantoid" which, if there were an observer to see it, would be seen to have some sort of life on it (evolved from some micro organism that was on one of the little fragments of Earth)
Natures bigger, badder, smarter, more cunning and tougher than all of the Humans that ever lived put together. We should see ourselves for what we are. A small temporary blip on the graph of "dominant species who lived on Earth".
So whilst I think the Monsantos of this world are a bunch of evil bastards who are trying to corner the world market for seed crops I'm not worried that they ever will. All that'll happen is that they fuck things up real bad for us humans. But nature won't care 'cause there's plenty more species waiting to take our place.
Or as an insect once said to me "Behold I am the mighty cockroach, give me 100 generations alone with them, and I can eat your poisons for lunch".
Ah Firefox... how promising you once were.
:)
You started off well and genuinely seemed to be designed to help me control what I saw on that there intermaweb. You blocked popups and gave me control of what I viewed (courtesy of Ad Block etc.) You really did seem to want to let me "take back the web".
But now you keep insisting that "additional plugins are required to view this page". Sorry but I disagree. I don't REQUIRE any plugins. Sorry but I don't want Flash. I'm just not interested in viewing those Flash adverts. I'd rather those CPU cycles went to Seti@home instead. Hell I'd rather they went to Sony's rootkit than to some fucking retarded marketroid's idea of what a web advert whould look like.
If Firefox is helping me "take back the web" then why does it insist I REQUIRE Flash to be installed ? Sorry I just don't want it. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.
So whilst Firefox is still marginally better than IE (at least there's no Craptive-X in there) it's now a complete pain in the arse to use on any mainstream sites (i.e. anything with Flashvertising due to the following sequence of events:
"Additional plugins are..." clicks no thanks, clicks a link in the page,
"Additional plugins are..." clicks no thanks, clicks a link in the page,
"Additional plugins are..." clicks no thanks, clicks a link in the page
Gives up in disgust and goes back to the pub
Yet it started off with so much promise... Ho hum.
P.S. And no, setting "plugin.default_plugin_disabled" to false in about:config doesn't switch this off anymore so there.
It's a Sony. What do you expect ?
The company that brought the single worst piece of DRM crap (their abortion of a rootkit) yet introduced.
Don't want any of this crap ? don't buy Sony. It's that simple.
>then do what this reader did and put in wrong information under those questions.
Good grief. As a matter of course you should supply incorrect details to all questions asked my marketers. In the words of the late great Bill Hicks these people are "Satan's little helpers" so no, you do not need to be polite to them. Nor are you obliged to give them ANY accurate information.
Whenever I get my hands on a questionnaire I fill it in with incorrect information and return it. When I get a marketing call then, if they're doing "market research", I give them totally, WILDLY inaccurate information ("yes I am a female and yes I earn 2,000 pounds a year") or, if they're trying to sell me something, I just tell them to fuck off. (And yes I am in the TPS but sometimes like to fuck with the bastards who ignore the list)
Hell I especially love telling double glazing salespeople to call round then when they show up I just tell them "no I'm not interested, but I just wanted to waste some of YOUR time like you do when you ring me when I'm home on MY time".
Fuck marketers, fuck advertising, fuck all that consumeroid crap.
So no there is no way you can be too paranoid about privacy. Give them an inch and they'll shaft you a mile. It is the duty of every sane human being to poison the marketroid database with false values. At each and every turn fill it with shit.
Souless bastards.
No... say it ain't so...
:)
Surely Microsoft aren't adding a feature to Windows without giving thorough consideration as to how the feature will work in a multi user, internet connected, environment ?
After all they've show time and time again how much they cae about these things
And here was me giving the article a quick glance and thinking this meant meant that Alvin Stardust was making a comback...
Buggeration, I'd already got my elephant gun cleaned & oiled before I realised I'd misread it.
Yo ho hum.
> Microsoft Ends IE for Mac
(Glances at nearby MAC users) You lucky, lucky bastards.
>should we all go around and change every gui so it can be used with a one button mouse and three keys on the keyboard?
Hey ! Leave the Gnome project out of this (ducks)
And whilst you're promoting Exact Audio Copy don't forget to also mention the Uberstandard for mp3 rips. It's a damn good idea.
'cause there's nothing worse than badly encoded mp3s ! (oh alright getting a paper cut on your Glans would be far, far worse than a badly encoded mp3 but you know what I mean...)
Another thing that hacks me off with the Google is the amount of "compare prices" spam links that now appear in the results.
;)
It seems that whenever I look for anything a large amount of the initial results are along the lines of "compare prices for [search terms]". It doesn't even matter what I'm searching for as these idiots seem to think I'm only using the internet for shopping. All in all a complete fucking waste of time and space.
Personally what I'd like to see is a plugin whereby I can blacklist certain sites so they either don't get returned in my results or they're at least stripped out before the page is rendered. Perhaps a Firefox plugin would be nice ?
But despite this I still prefer Google to any of the others (although not so much that I let them store cookies on my machine
Well I'm still using version 5.0 (the last pre Sony release) and I kept thinking I'd buy an upgrade when funds allowed (assuming of course I can actually get an upgrade from 5.0 to 7.0...)
But after Sonys rootkit fiasco I'm not buying anything from any of their divisions ever again. Never. No PS2, no hi-fi, no TV, nothing, nada.
So I'll just stick with version 5.0 thanks.
What would be really nice is for the EU/South Korea etc. to force Microsoft to remove IE out of the core of the OS and to produce an installer that gave you full control over which additional programs you wish to install. That way I could install Windows without having to install all the crap I don't use such as IE, Media Player, Outlook (not to mention the myriad crappy services etc. etc.)
Personally I have to use Windows on one machine as I use it to run Logic Audio and Sound Forge and it bugs the hell out of me that every time I have to reinstall the bloody OS, or use Windows update, it wants to install all these crappy Microsoft programs/services that I simply don't want.
Now that would be a useful court decision.
Well I haven't read the list (come on this is /. after all !) but I bet it doesn't contain my favourite namely "The Great Explosion" (which is actually a fleshed out version of "And Then There Were None") by Eric Frank Russell.
:)
Absolutely brilliant bit of work and you can even read the shorter version online. Best link I can come up with at the moment is at abelard.org although I did once find a less "garish" (i.e. ad free) version which I now can't seem to track down.
Ah... if only more people had the sense to live like this