Every man, woman, 13 years old girls and their dogs use MSN Messenger in Europe: that's exactly what makes the people I know stick with Hotmail. Many of them find it easier to get an Hotmail email to log on MSN than to sign-up for a Passport account and bind it to their existant email.
Why? I have no idea. I'm guessing it's Microsoft way of throwing "Sign-up for Hotmail!" signs when you're filling up your info in MSN Messenger.
Personally, I hate Hotmail. Yahoo! and GMail upgrade all their users' space at the same time. As for Hotmail, it still has my account at *2 megs*, the same limit it had since *1998*, when I signed up for it. I wrote an email to Support asking if they were planning on upgrading my account and they just advertised Hotmail Plus!, the paid version. (joke)My guess is that they still have my account stored in an old Solaris box and they can't find where it is.(/joke) I haven't used my Hotmail account for a long time now, but I keep it around just in case some distant family member who got my email 5 years ago tries to contact me -- yes, it happens more often than I expected.
Of all the advertising companies out there, there's no one more evil than DoubleClick. I mean, you really can't get more evil than DoubleClick. IF being annoying was an F1 race, DoubleClick would be Ferrari. Its ads are really annoying, with all the Flash crap, sounds, pop-ups, tracking cookies and shady Javascript code. How the hell does this guy expect people *not* to block DoubleClick?
Hint: Change your company's ways of advertising to something reasonable and maybe people will stop binding your domains to 127.0.0.1 in the hosts file. If the way you make money is unethical (legal != ethical), don't be surprised when people boycott your company. This is like the Italian Mafia Godfather complaining that people protect their stores with alarms.
Wrong. It was the WGA that was cracked, not the activation scheme. The program doesn't generate you a valid serial, it only generates you a valid WGA serial, which is still pretty useless. If you're running an illegal version of Windows, your serial will still be the same blacklisted one.
Nope. I'll just ask them what OS are they running and reboot to that OS. The problem would be that I couldn't argue with a Linux Zealot and a MS Fanboy at the same time without having to reboot 30 times in a row...
Can't wait until someone hacks the x86 version of Mac OS X to run on non-Mac. However, I suppose the biggest problem wouldn't be the "Mac-only" protection itself, it would be to find OS X drivers for your average PC hardware. Well, I suppose you could make many BSD drivers work under the x86 Darwin with little tweaking, but I might be wrong.
Can't wait, though. Triple boot PC! Or if a decent OpenSolaris distro comes out, tetra-boot! After that, no one on Slashdot can trash my OS anymore...
I downloaded this out of curiosity, the only thing it contains is a DOC file with instructions.
Anyway, what's the point of doing this? You can still download things from Microsoft's site if you don't validate. You just have to pick the "Don't validate" option. Oooh, great, some guy made it so you don't have to click the annoying "No, thanks" button every time you want to download Microsoft Anti-Spyware!
The *real* challenge is to crack the activation algorithm. (which I belive that has some form of the RSA algorithm in it). People, WGA != activation. Activation is the one that's a bitch. If you happen to mess with your hardware in your Windows box a lot, you'll know what I mean. And since I can never use the Internet activation because I "Already used that code too many times" (Swapping IDE hard drives once in a while for backups with Windows is out of the question now?), I end up having to call Miss Microsoft Robot all the time, who always tells me it's very important to use Windows Update to protect my computer from viruses before she gives me my activation code.
I really wanted to make a "You must be new here" reply for the first time. However, before you mod me Troll, please think of what my [emacs] psychologist said to me this morning: that I'm only doing this because I have a high user-id and that intimidates me, so I am desperatly trying to fit in the/. crowd by acting like your average/bot.
Or, if you prefer the Freudian approach: penis.
How come no other topic beside Microsoft gets that kind of immature treatment?
Don't worry, when I start writing dumb articles for a magazine, I'll use the name "Qwerty", so other people can't make fun of you for using a Dvorak keyboard.
And while I'm at that, I'll make the magazine hire another dumbass who will call himself "Azerty", just so the french can't laugh at us.
I block ads that are annoying the same way that I get off my seat and go do something else when the ads are on TV. While I normally don't go to sites with annoying ads as a matter of principle, even if I am blocking them, I am in my full right to not allow my browser to execute tons of useless Javascript that will slow down my computer like hell. Last time I checked, it's up to me, the viewer, that decides how I'm going to see something. What would you do if I telnetted to port 80 and just looked at the raw data while parsing it in my head?
Some webmasters need to learn the WWW isn't a TV station or a Newspaper. If you don't want me to look at your precious site, pull the server plug. You don't own anything here, you can't force Internet Inc. to only distribute browsers that won't allow ad blocking. The Internet is an Internet of computers, which we are all part of. If you site, on the other side of the node, has a feature I despize, you can't force me to look at it. You can deny me access and close the connection, but you can't force me to stand something I hate. Sadly, it seems some people see the WWW as a "big TV with a keyboard", and it's only because some people think that way that I get comments like those.
Ads are your only way of revenue? Use inobtrusive ads and I won't block you, heck, I might even click on them. Remember, while TV corporations are the "Company" and the viewers are the "Customer", here (unless you're my ISP or own the backbone my packets go through) we're all the same. I can get the same stuff your site is offering me a thousand different ways. I won't tolerate Javascript crap, though. The only reason why I don't browse with Javascript off altogether is because some sites use them in links. (shame on them!)
I blocked IntelliTXT ads a long time ago with the script blocking feature of Adblock. It's so annoying, when you see links in an article, you expect them to be relevant links, not ads. It comes down to the point that people start ignoring the sites you link to in a IntelliTXT'D article, since they all look the same.
Sense of security sells, actual security is invisible, so it doesn't. That's why companies like Symantec need to spread FUD about worms and viruses to convince people to buy their crappy software.
Last time I checked, educating people about how viruses spread is a lot more effective than installing an anti-virus program that they don't know how to operate and have no idea how it works.
I did try making Firefox prompt for every cookie. It was a disaster, I couldn't browse the web without being prompted to accept a cookie every 5 seconds.
Right now, I have cookies disabled by default and the Permit Cookies extension installed. Every time I want to be logged on automatically at a site (eg. Slashdot), I hit Alt+C and press "Allow", which will allow cookies from that domain. When a site bitches about me not accepting cookies but I feel that site shouldn't use cookies at all, I hit Alt+C again and press "Session", which will make the cookie disappear when I close my browser.
Zero problems with tracking cookies since I started using this method with a minimum hassle.
Yeah, I could have sworn I already saw something like this a long time ago. Seems like Bluetooth and WiFi is the new hype, throw one of them in and suddenly, your old product is new and innovating.
"Hello, this is your commander speaking. We'll be flying the Boeing 959 beta today with known bugs in the engine. If it crashes, the airline says we'll have to wait for the patch that will come out in October. I wish you all a pleasent trip!"
Is it just me or did it become trendy to call things beta?
Thing is, most of us will never fly in one of those. The average Joe will still have to sit in a tiny seat for 10 hours just next to that fat guy who should be paying two tickets instead of one.
I mean, I wonder if anyone here actually took the Concorde?
Exactly. Try to play a game (Besides old DOS games - the mouse sucks in Doom 2), make a drawing, browse the web, etc. It's just an input device. It's useful in some areas, not so useful in others (ever tried inserting text using only a mouse?). Plus, the most widespread application among companies all over the world won't work without a mouse: Solitaire!
I mean, if you claim that you never use your mouse, you need to get out of your parent's basement. Great, I can already sense a whole new movement among geeks: "keyboard zealotry". Expect to see people ditching their mouses and start doing everything with their keyboards, followed by posting on Slashdot making fun of mouse users soon!:p
People at Microsoft never can stop surprising me. Too bad it's in the bad sense most of the times.
Think about it. You live in India. You consider yourself lucky for being able to afford a computer, but still, you have a very limited budget compared to Americans / Europeans / whatever. What would you do? Buy a better system and get a pirated version of the OS or do The Right Thing (TM) and buy a worse system but with a legally acquired OS? Sure, you won't help your friend whose family is starving, but you're willing to give money away to the richest foreigner in the world.
Am I the only one who hates the way the whole GNU/Linux community is split up? There are already few apps (with a GUI) compared to Windows applications, if the community keeps splitting up, Linux will never pose a real threat to Windows in the desktop world. Your average PC user doesn't want to have to deal with a different look-and-feel every time he boots an application, so he'll be stuck with the apps that were developed for his desktop environment. Heck, I stick with Kopete because Gaim looks so damned ugly under KDE.
Sure, I have a lot of choices under GNU/Linux. Too bad that for every choice I make I become more and more limited.
Slashdot Mirror
Why? I have no idea. I'm guessing it's Microsoft way of throwing "Sign-up for Hotmail!" signs when you're filling up your info in MSN Messenger.
Personally, I hate Hotmail. Yahoo! and GMail upgrade all their users' space at the same time. As for Hotmail, it still has my account at *2 megs*, the same limit it had since *1998*, when I signed up for it. I wrote an email to Support asking if they were planning on upgrading my account and they just advertised Hotmail Plus!, the paid version.
(joke)My guess is that they still have my account stored in an old Solaris box and they can't find where it is.(/joke) I haven't used my Hotmail account for a long time now, but I keep it around just in case some distant family member who got my email 5 years ago tries to contact me -- yes, it happens more often than I expected.
Hint: Change your company's ways of advertising to something reasonable and maybe people will stop binding your domains to 127.0.0.1 in the hosts file. If the way you make money is unethical (legal != ethical), don't be surprised when people boycott your company. This is like the Italian Mafia Godfather complaining that people protect their stores with alarms.
Wrong. It was the WGA that was cracked, not the activation scheme. The program doesn't generate you a valid serial, it only generates you a valid WGA serial, which is still pretty useless. If you're running an illegal version of Windows, your serial will still be the same blacklisted one.
Nope. I'll just ask them what OS are they running and reboot to that OS. The problem would be that I couldn't argue with a Linux Zealot and a MS Fanboy at the same time without having to reboot 30 times in a row...
Can't wait, though. Triple boot PC! Or if a decent OpenSolaris distro comes out, tetra-boot! After that, no one on Slashdot can trash my OS anymore...
Anyway, what's the point of doing this? You can still download things from Microsoft's site if you don't validate. You just have to pick the "Don't validate" option. Oooh, great, some guy made it so you don't have to click the annoying "No, thanks" button every time you want to download Microsoft Anti-Spyware!
The *real* challenge is to crack the activation algorithm. (which I belive that has some form of the RSA algorithm in it). People, WGA != activation. Activation is the one that's a bitch. If you happen to mess with your hardware in your Windows box a lot, you'll know what I mean. And since I can never use the Internet activation because I "Already used that code too many times" (Swapping IDE hard drives once in a while for backups with Windows is out of the question now?), I end up having to call Miss Microsoft Robot all the time, who always tells me it's very important to use Windows Update to protect my computer from viruses before she gives me my activation code.
Or, if you prefer the Freudian approach: penis.
How come no other topic beside Microsoft gets that kind of immature treatment?
You must be new here.
And while I'm at that, I'll make the magazine hire another dumbass who will call himself "Azerty", just so the french can't laugh at us.
Some webmasters need to learn the WWW isn't a TV station or a Newspaper. If you don't want me to look at your precious site, pull the server plug. You don't own anything here, you can't force Internet Inc. to only distribute browsers that won't allow ad blocking. The Internet is an Internet of computers, which we are all part of. If you site, on the other side of the node, has a feature I despize, you can't force me to look at it. You can deny me access and close the connection, but you can't force me to stand something I hate. Sadly, it seems some people see the WWW as a "big TV with a keyboard", and it's only because some people think that way that I get comments like those.
Ads are your only way of revenue? Use inobtrusive ads and I won't block you, heck, I might even click on them. Remember, while TV corporations are the "Company" and the viewers are the "Customer", here (unless you're my ISP or own the backbone my packets go through) we're all the same. I can get the same stuff your site is offering me a thousand different ways. I won't tolerate Javascript crap, though. The only reason why I don't browse with Javascript off altogether is because some sites use them in links. (shame on them!)
I blocked IntelliTXT ads a long time ago with the script blocking feature of Adblock. It's so annoying, when you see links in an article, you expect them to be relevant links, not ads. It comes down to the point that people start ignoring the sites you link to in a IntelliTXT'D article, since they all look the same.
Who said being part of the working class sucks?
But seriously, you know you're a winner when your Internet prank becomes a net.legend and makes it to Wikipedia.
Wait, what's this "real life" you speak of?
Sadly, it's not only in Soviet Russia this time. And we're not even counting with all those bogus spyware scanners that install spyware themselves..
Last time I checked, educating people about how viruses spread is a lot more effective than installing an anti-virus program that they don't know how to operate and have no idea how it works.
Right now, I have cookies disabled by default and the Permit Cookies extension installed. Every time I want to be logged on automatically at a site (eg. Slashdot), I hit Alt+C and press "Allow", which will allow cookies from that domain. When a site bitches about me not accepting cookies but I feel that site shouldn't use cookies at all, I hit Alt+C again and press "Session", which will make the cookie disappear when I close my browser.
Zero problems with tracking cookies since I started using this method with a minimum hassle.
Think about it. They trademarked "Numbers". That includes 0 and 1! All the software I use is under copyright violation now!
Yeah, I could have sworn I already saw something like this a long time ago. Seems like Bluetooth and WiFi is the new hype, throw one of them in and suddenly, your old product is new and innovating.
Is it just me or did it become trendy to call things beta?
I mean, I wonder if anyone here actually took the Concorde?
No, they will only make the source code available to people with DRM enabled chips embedded in their brains.
I mean, if you claim that you never use your mouse, you need to get out of your parent's basement. Great, I can already sense a whole new movement among geeks: "keyboard zealotry". Expect to see people ditching their mouses and start doing everything with their keyboards, followed by posting on Slashdot making fun of mouse users soon! :p
...this bash.org quote will no longer be funny.
Think about it. You live in India. You consider yourself lucky for being able to afford a computer, but still, you have a very limited budget compared to Americans / Europeans / whatever. What would you do? Buy a better system and get a pirated version of the OS or do The Right Thing (TM) and buy a worse system but with a legally acquired OS? Sure, you won't help your friend whose family is starving, but you're willing to give money away to the richest foreigner in the world.
Sure, I have a lot of choices under GNU/Linux. Too bad that for every choice I make I become more and more limited.