100% agreed. I use Real Alternative, and there has never been a time where I liked Real (even back when I used RealPlayer a long time ago). Buffering is exactly what I remember, and it was gay, and slow as fuck. And the stupid update reminder. It's so retarded that I went to a museum once, and they were projecting something onto a screen for an audience and the update reminder interrupted the entire fucking thing (had fullscreen movie playing, and the fucking thing intruded!).
The new RealOne player they had was also a big RAM hog, just as bad as WiMP. Nowadays, if something is only available in Real, I won't even bother. I just say something like "Fuck them, if they want me to watch (or listen to) it, they better put it in a format that's decent." No content is worth a dime in Real, and I know I'm gonna get flamebait for tihs one.
Google Earth is pretty cool. I find Thunderbird and Firefox with Mac themes on them extremely exciting (eye candy!). Even Windows Messenger has a little eye candy (gradients are always cool for some reason).
On Windows, my favorite apps are Photoshop (my favorite), foobar2000, uTorrent, Trillian Pro (2.0 not 3), RealVNC, Daemon Tools (love mounting images over network), Media Player Classic with Quicktime & Real Alternative (works great, and streaming files over network through wireless is extremely exciting when it works), Skype, FlashFXP, DVD Decrypter (yes I still use it, very exciting to watch), DVD Rebuilder, and there's a bunch more (including OpenOffice, Thunderbird, and Firefox). They are exciting because they work.
On Linux, I like OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox, GIMP, and there's many more.
Are Linux users not desktop users? Honestly, what is this phrase "desktop user"? And also, a lot of people are buying laptops (I use a laptop, once you go lap you never go back) nowadays because of the portability and the price on decent or half-decent laptops has certainly gone down in the past years.
On my laptop I run Windows XP and Ubuntu. I love Ubuntu, but the only thing I haven't done yet is set up DVD ripping to XviD type stuff on it, like GordianKnot on Windows. Once I do that, I can make a full switch, I don't even play games that often in Windows anymore (other than SimCity 3K and The Sims), most console, MAME, and handheld emulators are available for Linux also. Linux can really handle all my needs (other than why the hell does full screen video look all blocky on VLC? (still trying to figure this one out))
Also, isn't GIMP exciting enough? I think that once big companies start really start marketing Linux software that's closed source, it will become mainstream and that will mean less free software, all kinds of license agreements, probably DRM forms (dongles and such), and so on.
Then you pirate what you know has DRM? I guess that would be every DVD then.
Not saying that's bad or hurts anybody, but someday, the way things are going, there will be no alternative other than true free content (as in beer), and to be 100% honest, I just haven't seen anything incredibly terrific from that (I like THE.SCENE and TEH.SCENE but that's about it).
Is that because the book that came with the CD didn't have the lyrics?
There are countless times where I have bought a CD and wanted to know the lyrics to a song, and the book only had credits information. It makes me so mad. How do they expect us to sing (or maybe they don't want us to sing since we're not a licensed performer) a song if we can't understand the words or if the lyrics are not given to us?
I think many of these sites for lyrics are doing it because a lot of albums still get published with no lyrics in the included book. There are people correcting as well (a Wiki lyrics would be great for this) when there's no official lyrics printed anywhere (except in an overly expensive sheet book, who buys those for rap (yes they do make rap ones)?).
I think it's a similar situation with guitar tabs online. Although I hate these in general and never really used them (I learn by ear damnit, and you should try it someday!), plus more than half on these sites are wrong or poorly written IMO. But the thing is, the alternative is to buy the sheet book, but these generally cost $15 or more, the same or more than the cost of the CD. If they lowered the price on these sheet books to between $3 and $8 I would probably have more sheet books (although I still learn by ear 90% of the time, even if that includes taking the audio into Sound Forge and time stretching it to be slower).
The easy answer to that is because a lot of the creative work is already done by the film crew. Turning a book into something visual is a very tricky business, because everybody has a different interpretation of how it should look.
Very true, but I think it should be up to the artists (not using a movie if there is one). Some of the great "tales" of the past also have authorities that say what things should look like. The J.R.R. Tolkien Society is said to have had to approve of what EA could do in its Lord of the Rings games, and many players disagreed with Tolkien Society's views.
Meh. I have never had a problem with freedb, but there have been countless times when albums have been wrong or spelled incorrectly, etc (I also hate when I see "of" and "the" capitalized when it's in not the first word!).
In your point of view, all the credit card and bank databases should be public domain too? For this information, I think maybe it could be public domain, but regardless of what happens I think the RIAA will sue in the near future. They can sue people for anything.
Nah. VPC has advantages. It's the only one that can run OS/2 4 Warp easily. It's got support from the software maker to emulate, so really the software should work 100% (I've never had a problem).
VMware can run Mac OS X x86 with very little done (10.4.3 with hacks works great). However, I find Parallels the best in performance for Windows & Linux. So far, it's the only one I found that can play XviD and DVD movies at full-speed or near, even at full-screen (not that its useful). The rest can do audio and such, but the audio emulated in VPC is an old Sound Blaster to run old MS-DOS games. The audio in VMware is another Creative. The most modern audio device emulated is with Parallels, an AC97-based card. Also, Parallels emulates a 6MB video card as opposed to 4MB in VPC and VMWare.
100% agreed. I was about to make a post entitled "DRM. NO THANKS"
Also, now the company is going to tell me I have to use up MY bandwidth for their shit that I paid for? They want control over everything, sadly. "PLEASE BE KIND, SEED" will be what the sites that sell legal content will say. Terrible.
If they don't require seeding once the file is done, then this makes this tiny bit better. I'm sure there will be plenty of seeders set up by the companies. But DRM and no way. If they aren't going to sell me a DVD ISO with cover scans that I can burn right after it finishes downloading, and then label myself, forget it. Same goes for RIAA. If they aren't going to sell me a CD ISO, or WAVs, or AIFs, or even FLACs (like they would ever support that), with cover scans, then forget it. Until they do sell media that way, I'll prefer the physical media.
The only thing so far that has come about on Wikipedia that I seriously care about and have a stance against is the Child pornography article and the "Childlover", "Boylover", and "Girllover" articles, which I find extremely disgusting. I believe these articles are by child molestors and edited by them, and even the Child pornography article gets edited by those who enjoy this. BBC once reported on these articles and the real problem with having a site that is found usually within the first 5 results on Google, with articles like these. I guess either no other "encyclopedia" has child pornography articles, certainly no "childlover" and such, and even if they did, no encyclopedia would be unbiased and neutral, like the way the Wikipedia articles on these topics attempt to be.
I'm 500% against these people, and these articles, which could easily influence anyone young to start to think it is okay to like it, or okay for a 30 year old man to have relations with an 8 year old boy. Disgusting.
I support anything the government does to stop and deter these people (even though usually it's a disguised law to limit our rights with the Congress making their "save the children" stance). I'm all for "save the children," but not limiting my rights.
Above is absolutely correct. You do get controversial results on controversial subjects. But I think most people have some common sense, hence the reason why the views on these articles keep changing with every update some normal person or some nut job prick makes.
As I recall, Wikipedia is consistantly more accurate on concrete subjects (ie. minimally disputed science and academics) than published encyclopedias, so yes, very true.
I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who thinks this. I read about plenty of historical events and about languages and etymologies all the time on Wikipedia, and sometimes read news events, but that's less interesting than "concrete subjects."
My problem with the article is it is seemingly FUD. The Washington Post is a published and well-respected news source, any encyclopedia company seriously losing money to Wikipedia (Britannica, World Book, Grolier, Microsoft) could've told them to attempt at discrediting it with an article. Even at school, I get told all the time by teachers that Wikipedia is not a valid source, so I attempt at not using it when sources really matter as part of my grade, however, despite what teachers say, there are still tons of kids using Wikipedia as a source in all kinds of schoolwork, and any company that doesn't publish on paper. Frankly, I feel it is a major Big Brother sorta thing to have "credible" sources and other places to be considered automatically not credible, like Wikipedia. Teachers who have been using books from publishing companies for decades would love this article, along with the other 10000 articles about how Wikipedia is somehow not credible.
Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?
on
When Wikipedia Fails
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
What they should do is have a version of Wikipedia that has already been verified by a community of editors. So, a process similar to the following would take place:
1) General population would add/modify/remove entries on Wikipedia with public-editing capabilities.
2) A second Wikipedia would be set-up where only a group of editors would have write-access to the content. The editors would periodically compare the two versions of Wikipedia and commit the "good" information from the publicly-edited version to the restricted version.
That would not make any sense from a Wiki standpoint. The second is not a Wikipedia or Wiki at all, it's a private organization publishing information. Who gets access? "Scholars," "Historians," people with PhD's only? People with an IQ of 180 or more?
Re:How much editorial oversight is enough?
on
When Wikipedia Fails
·
· Score: -1, Troll
Also, swears don't mean anything to most of us these days I don't think. They are just words; I think we are very near the day when fuck is perfectly acceptable as way to emphasize something as opposed to doing a voice change (or both).
Either way, I disagree that this did not affect Hollywood's revenue, like I really care, but regardless. I guess if I were a moviemaker, and someone was profitting from making edited bootlegs, I would get pretty pissed off. I could care less that they edited; I would care only that they copied enough of the content so it's not fair use, and automatically fair use is out the window when there is a dollar sign attached to their actions. Even if it's a trade-in, the end result is a copy, which would not be legit since it is not that same one that's at that licensed business place. Is CleanFilms a licensed business? I seriously doubt it.
I think these companies deserve what they are getting in the end, even if everyone hates the MPAA on just the fact they got money and we don't. I really think that these companies did what they did because they probably did minimal advertising, using little to no ads (I never heard of them), relied on word of mouth, and thought they were so small that the MPAA would never see them, especially out of the other bunch of editing companies out there across the country.
In the end they got caught. I bet only now they are just starting to remember there is a law called the DMCA... they are fucked for removing "fuck." I'd laugh at them if I were in the courtroom.
"That's a pirate copy." "No it isn't." "Yes it is, you burnt that CD yourself." "Yeah, but here's my real copy of the disc, I simply customized Windows to not be so shitty with the default settings. Problem?" "...illegal!"
Very annoying spelling. Most anyone online knows how to read English, and spell properly. There is no reason to reform. Try to learn French and then you'll see illogical spelling (silent h's, e's, s's, even ent's (ils form), etc). I only disagree with ch, sh, and th; none of these make any sense t + h when split does not make th (Voiceless Dental fricative that many foreign language speakers cannot do quite right unless they speak Arabic). C + h does not make the ch sound (Voiceless postalveolar affricate), and s + h does not make sh (voiceless palato-alveolar fricative). I would not mind using the the thorn letter () for th, for ch, and for sh; it makes way more sense.
The other issue is that a spelling system works much more effectively if homophones can be spelt differently. In Chinese, this problem was solved by making a different character for every word, even if they sounded the same, and much was done the same way in Japanese, but the downside is how much longer it can take to read this way. In French and English, this is of course done by spelling differently (their, there, they're) and in French (moi (me), mois (month, s is silent)).
Spelling is changing all the time but not in a major way. Through is becoming thru, and you maybe someday might be u (although I would hate this). The other problem with English, unlike Spanish, is that there are many dialects in a sort of close area. Boston is only 40 minutes away from me and I'll start hearing words like car become simply kaah and park become paak, then I could go to Lowell not too far away (pronounced Lohl in Lowell, I pronounce it Lo-wull). In Spanish, the problem is not there because everyone was given the same spellings a long time ago and they read with their accent, which of course we do, but anyone learning Spanish would see how much more logical the spelling is.
I think the major reason for this is because the spellings were simply set whether people liked it or not, and not much has changed since then regardless of accents; there were not that many speakers at the time (just Spain) that it could make an impact. In English, it's far too radical to tell 515 million speakers (Englishtoday to spell differently. We all spell the same (mostly) and pronounce according to our dialect. Changes will occur, but nothing major will ever happen in English spelling.
Also note that unlike many other languages, English shows the origins of many words. Yacht is a strange one to anyone who doesn't know where it comes from, but it comes from Dutch, and of course in Dutch the ch is pronounced (like a k). Knife and knight used to pronounce the K sound. Today the K in knight helps majorly to anyone reading because then they automatically know the word is referring to a knight, not a night.
Hanyu pinyin seems to make the most sense. Replacing zhe with tse (as Wade-Giles does) makes no sense to an English speaker. Not all of the romanization systems ever are created for English speakers.
The letter e in Hanyu pinyin is as randomly pronounced as English's. For the most part I think c is a good way to write ts (it saves time supposedly). But if it were not changed randomly, like the way the e is pronounced, it would work much better. The other thing that gets confusing to anyone new is zh and j and ch, along with the i, which can be pronounced ee (number 4, si4, like in seen) or i (like in it, in, etc, like the word for to be (shi4) or ten (shi4)).
I like Hanyu pinyin much more than Wade-Giles. Wade-Giles doesn't seem to look like it was made by someone who spoke English at all. Also, in Cantonese, the most common romanization system used is the SL Wong system. That is also not created by an English speaker, as it used j to make the y (like German).
Slashdot Mirror
100% agreed. I use Real Alternative, and there has never been a time where I liked Real (even back when I used RealPlayer a long time ago). Buffering is exactly what I remember, and it was gay, and slow as fuck. And the stupid update reminder. It's so retarded that I went to a museum once, and they were projecting something onto a screen for an audience and the update reminder interrupted the entire fucking thing (had fullscreen movie playing, and the fucking thing intruded!).
The new RealOne player they had was also a big RAM hog, just as bad as WiMP. Nowadays, if something is only available in Real, I won't even bother. I just say something like "Fuck them, if they want me to watch (or listen to) it, they better put it in a format that's decent." No content is worth a dime in Real, and I know I'm gonna get flamebait for tihs one.
Google Earth is pretty cool. I find Thunderbird and Firefox with Mac themes on them extremely exciting (eye candy!). Even Windows Messenger has a little eye candy (gradients are always cool for some reason).
On Windows, my favorite apps are Photoshop (my favorite), foobar2000, uTorrent, Trillian Pro (2.0 not 3), RealVNC, Daemon Tools (love mounting images over network), Media Player Classic with Quicktime & Real Alternative (works great, and streaming files over network through wireless is extremely exciting when it works), Skype, FlashFXP, DVD Decrypter (yes I still use it, very exciting to watch), DVD Rebuilder, and there's a bunch more (including OpenOffice, Thunderbird, and Firefox). They are exciting because they work.
On Linux, I like OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox, GIMP, and there's many more.
Are Linux users not desktop users? Honestly, what is this phrase "desktop user"? And also, a lot of people are buying laptops (I use a laptop, once you go lap you never go back) nowadays because of the portability and the price on decent or half-decent laptops has certainly gone down in the past years.
On my laptop I run Windows XP and Ubuntu. I love Ubuntu, but the only thing I haven't done yet is set up DVD ripping to XviD type stuff on it, like GordianKnot on Windows. Once I do that, I can make a full switch, I don't even play games that often in Windows anymore (other than SimCity 3K and The Sims), most console, MAME, and handheld emulators are available for Linux also. Linux can really handle all my needs (other than why the hell does full screen video look all blocky on VLC? (still trying to figure this one out))
Also, isn't GIMP exciting enough? I think that once big companies start really start marketing Linux software that's closed source, it will become mainstream and that will mean less free software, all kinds of license agreements, probably DRM forms (dongles and such), and so on.
NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL!
Only companies actually buy Windows licenses!
Then you pirate what you know has DRM? I guess that would be every DVD then.
Not saying that's bad or hurts anybody, but someday, the way things are going, there will be no alternative other than true free content (as in beer), and to be 100% honest, I just haven't seen anything incredibly terrific from that (I like THE.SCENE and TEH.SCENE but that's about it).
VirtualDubMod was encoding a decrypted DVD to XviD while I was reading this. Have a nice day!
No way. Not if I paid. I expect it on demand then, and at a steady rate; anything above 500kB/s works for me (I often get this on porn trackers).
(Hello. MPAA? BitTorrent is the ideal mechanism to make distribution cheap, just charge for the "subscription" to the password for the tracker).
Fuck seeding when I have paid for the service. What are they gonna do? MAKE me seed? I bet I wouldn't be able to use any client I like either.
Is that because the book that came with the CD didn't have the lyrics?
There are countless times where I have bought a CD and wanted to know the lyrics to a song, and the book only had credits information. It makes me so mad. How do they expect us to sing (or maybe they don't want us to sing since we're not a licensed performer) a song if we can't understand the words or if the lyrics are not given to us?
I think many of these sites for lyrics are doing it because a lot of albums still get published with no lyrics in the included book. There are people correcting as well (a Wiki lyrics would be great for this) when there's no official lyrics printed anywhere (except in an overly expensive sheet book, who buys those for rap (yes they do make rap ones)?).
I think it's a similar situation with guitar tabs online. Although I hate these in general and never really used them (I learn by ear damnit, and you should try it someday!), plus more than half on these sites are wrong or poorly written IMO. But the thing is, the alternative is to buy the sheet book, but these generally cost $15 or more, the same or more than the cost of the CD. If they lowered the price on these sheet books to between $3 and $8 I would probably have more sheet books (although I still learn by ear 90% of the time, even if that includes taking the audio into Sound Forge and time stretching it to be slower).
The easy answer to that is because a lot of the creative work is already done by the film crew. Turning a book into something visual is a very tricky business, because everybody has a different interpretation of how it should look.
Very true, but I think it should be up to the artists (not using a movie if there is one). Some of the great "tales" of the past also have authorities that say what things should look like. The J.R.R. Tolkien Society is said to have had to approve of what EA could do in its Lord of the Rings games, and many players disagreed with Tolkien Society's views.
Meh. I have never had a problem with freedb, but there have been countless times when albums have been wrong or spelled incorrectly, etc (I also hate when I see "of" and "the" capitalized when it's in not the first word!).
In your point of view, all the credit card and bank databases should be public domain too? For this information, I think maybe it could be public domain, but regardless of what happens I think the RIAA will sue in the near future. They can sue people for anything.
Nah. VPC has advantages. It's the only one that can run OS/2 4 Warp easily. It's got support from the software maker to emulate, so really the software should work 100% (I've never had a problem).
VMware can run Mac OS X x86 with very little done (10.4.3 with hacks works great). However, I find Parallels the best in performance for Windows & Linux. So far, it's the only one I found that can play XviD and DVD movies at full-speed or near, even at full-screen (not that its useful). The rest can do audio and such, but the audio emulated in VPC is an old Sound Blaster to run old MS-DOS games. The audio in VMware is another Creative. The most modern audio device emulated is with Parallels, an AC97-based card. Also, Parallels emulates a 6MB video card as opposed to 4MB in VPC and VMWare.
Do all the people who paid for a copy get a refund?
100% agreed. I was about to make a post entitled "DRM. NO THANKS"
Also, now the company is going to tell me I have to use up MY bandwidth for their shit that I paid for? They want control over everything, sadly. "PLEASE BE KIND, SEED" will be what the sites that sell legal content will say. Terrible.
If they don't require seeding once the file is done, then this makes this tiny bit better. I'm sure there will be plenty of seeders set up by the companies. But DRM and no way. If they aren't going to sell me a DVD ISO with cover scans that I can burn right after it finishes downloading, and then label myself, forget it. Same goes for RIAA. If they aren't going to sell me a CD ISO, or WAVs, or AIFs, or even FLACs (like they would ever support that), with cover scans, then forget it. Until they do sell media that way, I'll prefer the physical media.
The only thing so far that has come about on Wikipedia that I seriously care about and have a stance against is the Child pornography article and the "Childlover", "Boylover", and "Girllover" articles, which I find extremely disgusting. I believe these articles are by child molestors and edited by them, and even the Child pornography article gets edited by those who enjoy this. BBC once reported on these articles and the real problem with having a site that is found usually within the first 5 results on Google, with articles like these. I guess either no other "encyclopedia" has child pornography articles, certainly no "childlover" and such, and even if they did, no encyclopedia would be unbiased and neutral, like the way the Wikipedia articles on these topics attempt to be.
I'm 500% against these people, and these articles, which could easily influence anyone young to start to think it is okay to like it, or okay for a 30 year old man to have relations with an 8 year old boy. Disgusting.
I support anything the government does to stop and deter these people (even though usually it's a disguised law to limit our rights with the Congress making their "save the children" stance). I'm all for "save the children," but not limiting my rights.
Above is absolutely correct. You do get controversial results on controversial subjects. But I think most people have some common sense, hence the reason why the views on these articles keep changing with every update some normal person or some nut job prick makes.
As I recall, Wikipedia is consistantly more accurate on concrete subjects (ie. minimally disputed science and academics) than published encyclopedias, so yes, very true.
I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who thinks this. I read about plenty of historical events and about languages and etymologies all the time on Wikipedia, and sometimes read news events, but that's less interesting than "concrete subjects."
My problem with the article is it is seemingly FUD. The Washington Post is a published and well-respected news source, any encyclopedia company seriously losing money to Wikipedia (Britannica, World Book, Grolier, Microsoft) could've told them to attempt at discrediting it with an article. Even at school, I get told all the time by teachers that Wikipedia is not a valid source, so I attempt at not using it when sources really matter as part of my grade, however, despite what teachers say, there are still tons of kids using Wikipedia as a source in all kinds of schoolwork, and any company that doesn't publish on paper. Frankly, I feel it is a major Big Brother sorta thing to have "credible" sources and other places to be considered automatically not credible, like Wikipedia. Teachers who have been using books from publishing companies for decades would love this article, along with the other 10000 articles about how Wikipedia is somehow not credible.
What they should do is have a version of Wikipedia that has already been verified by a community of editors. So, a process similar to the following would take place:
1) General population would add/modify/remove entries on Wikipedia with public-editing capabilities.
2) A second Wikipedia would be set-up where only a group of editors would have write-access to the content. The editors would periodically compare the two versions of Wikipedia and commit the "good" information from the publicly-edited version to the restricted version.
That would not make any sense from a Wiki standpoint. The second is not a Wikipedia or Wiki at all, it's a private organization publishing information. Who gets access? "Scholars," "Historians," people with PhD's only? People with an IQ of 180 or more?
IMDb still sucks ass.
Also, swears don't mean anything to most of us these days I don't think. They are just words; I think we are very near the day when fuck is perfectly acceptable as way to emphasize something as opposed to doing a voice change (or both).
Either way, I disagree that this did not affect Hollywood's revenue, like I really care, but regardless. I guess if I were a moviemaker, and someone was profitting from making edited bootlegs, I would get pretty pissed off. I could care less that they edited; I would care only that they copied enough of the content so it's not fair use, and automatically fair use is out the window when there is a dollar sign attached to their actions. Even if it's a trade-in, the end result is a copy, which would not be legit since it is not that same one that's at that licensed business place. Is CleanFilms a licensed business? I seriously doubt it.
I think these companies deserve what they are getting in the end, even if everyone hates the MPAA on just the fact they got money and we don't. I really think that these companies did what they did because they probably did minimal advertising, using little to no ads (I never heard of them), relied on word of mouth, and thought they were so small that the MPAA would never see them, especially out of the other bunch of editing companies out there across the country.
In the end they got caught. I bet only now they are just starting to remember there is a law called the DMCA... they are fucked for removing "fuck." I'd laugh at them if I were in the courtroom.
says the Anonymous coward
More like.
"That's a pirate copy."
"No it isn't."
"Yes it is, you burnt that CD yourself."
"Yeah, but here's my real copy of the disc, I simply customized Windows to not be so shitty with the default settings. Problem?"
"...illegal!"
Very annoying spelling. Most anyone online knows how to read English, and spell properly. There is no reason to reform. Try to learn French and then you'll see illogical spelling (silent h's, e's, s's, even ent's (ils form), etc). I only disagree with ch, sh, and th; none of these make any sense t + h when split does not make th (Voiceless Dental fricative that many foreign language speakers cannot do quite right unless they speak Arabic). C + h does not make the ch sound (Voiceless postalveolar affricate), and s + h does not make sh (voiceless palato-alveolar fricative). I would not mind using the the thorn letter () for th, for ch, and for sh; it makes way more sense.
The other issue is that a spelling system works much more effectively if homophones can be spelt differently. In Chinese, this problem was solved by making a different character for every word, even if they sounded the same, and much was done the same way in Japanese, but the downside is how much longer it can take to read this way. In French and English, this is of course done by spelling differently (their, there, they're) and in French (moi (me), mois (month, s is silent)).
Spelling is changing all the time but not in a major way. Through is becoming thru, and you maybe someday might be u (although I would hate this). The other problem with English, unlike Spanish, is that there are many dialects in a sort of close area. Boston is only 40 minutes away from me and I'll start hearing words like car become simply kaah and park become paak, then I could go to Lowell not too far away (pronounced Lohl in Lowell, I pronounce it Lo-wull). In Spanish, the problem is not there because everyone was given the same spellings a long time ago and they read with their accent, which of course we do, but anyone learning Spanish would see how much more logical the spelling is.
I think the major reason for this is because the spellings were simply set whether people liked it or not, and not much has changed since then regardless of accents; there were not that many speakers at the time (just Spain) that it could make an impact. In English, it's far too radical to tell 515 million speakers (Englishtoday to spell differently. We all spell the same (mostly) and pronounce according to our dialect. Changes will occur, but nothing major will ever happen in English spelling.
Also note that unlike many other languages, English shows the origins of many words. Yacht is a strange one to anyone who doesn't know where it comes from, but it comes from Dutch, and of course in Dutch the ch is pronounced (like a k). Knife and knight used to pronounce the K sound. Today the K in knight helps majorly to anyone reading because then they automatically know the word is referring to a knight, not a night.
Hanyu pinyin seems to make the most sense. Replacing zhe with tse (as Wade-Giles does) makes no sense to an English speaker. Not all of the romanization systems ever are created for English speakers.
The letter e in Hanyu pinyin is as randomly pronounced as English's. For the most part I think c is a good way to write ts (it saves time supposedly). But if it were not changed randomly, like the way the e is pronounced, it would work much better. The other thing that gets confusing to anyone new is zh and j and ch, along with the i, which can be pronounced ee (number 4, si4, like in seen) or i (like in it, in, etc, like the word for to be (shi4) or ten (shi4)).
I like Hanyu pinyin much more than Wade-Giles. Wade-Giles doesn't seem to look like it was made by someone who spoke English at all. Also, in Cantonese, the most common romanization system used is the SL Wong system. That is also not created by an English speaker, as it used j to make the y (like German).
Definitely AGAINST the user, but nothing can stop the user from being stupid.