This is a riot

Prof.Wizard

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ROFLMAO! :lol:
When I ordered it to crash, it crashed immediately! :mrgrn:
The most hilarious thing has been Word. I was writing other things and it insisted to help me, till it crashed... :eekers:

Where can I find a working copy of Windows RG?! LOL
 

Prof.Wizard

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Tannin said:
Almost, I weakened and downloaded Flash to look at this. But I stayed pure and resisted the temptation.

What OS you sport? And why Flash is so malignant?! :-?
 

Mercutio

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Flash is malignant because

1.) Flash isn't available for every browser, even on Windows (it's not available for Mozilla, but works with Netscape 6), nor for many non-Windows OSes (Flash for OS/2 browsers? Flash for Linux browsers? Flash for webTV?). Sites using Flash are therefore making a decision to limit the content that they provide to a subset of all possible clients, despite the utterly universal nature of HTML/XML (it's text, people!). Installing flash isn't the easiest thing in the world for the technically clueless, either. One has to assume sites requiring modern versions of the flash client lose some appeal to that group as well.

Note that many of the same complaints also hold true for java/ecma/vbscript-requiring pages.

2.) VERY VERY VERY seldom does flash add value or content to a web page. Mostly it's just extra crap to download - often flash is used in place of animated .GIF files. Worse, flash is often bandwidth-intensive crap. Nothing like having to download an 800kb flash file to see the intro page for some taiwanese motherboard manufacturer's page (ooo... spinning logo... that was worth eight minutes of my day).

3.) By being animated and at times interactive, flash is also annoying by definition. Spinning logos and animated characters make it harder to read text on a page, dammit.

Flash is evil. In the same category with AOL and nvidia in my book.
 

Prof.Wizard

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Mercutio said:
Flash is evil. In the same category with AOL and nvidia in my book.

You just don't like success stories, do you? :wink:

Well, I don't quite agree with you. First of all, 90% of all general users use versions of IE. This is not my personal statistics, I've seen many polls in sites (including Mandrake's, if I recall correctly, where IE wins... and a lot!). IE6 comes with Flash. I had to download only Shockwave and the Java runtime app.
Second, Flash is not so much disturbing... it gives gif-like animation with interactivity, without producing too big files. (Thank God it was integrated to CorelR.A.V.E. of my CorelDRAW10 suite... this way I can create some stuff there too...)
Third,... what the hell... download Handruin's link (WindowsRG :mrgrn: ) and tell me what you think...
 

Mercutio

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I would, if I had hours to kill while I downloaded it, or if I had flash installed on any of my machines.

In short, no way.

PW, the web should be a universal experience. The INTERNET should be a universal experience. Now I get 100-line-long e-mail messages with one line of text and 80-something lines of HTML crap that my plaintext e-mail client is more than happy to show me (thanks, Kevin). There are web sites requiring flash or javascript, things I don't want to use, thank you very much. The internet is no longer universal, and to the extent that it is not, I will not participate. I prefer the simple, universal tools I have always used.

AOL is evil for a lot of reasons. Their software breaks things. Established internet conventions, for one thing (been on a page with "special instructions for AOL users" recently?), not to mention other software on its users computers. AOL is a center for kiddie porn activity in the US, at least - almost always, when there is a news report about someone trying to entice a 12-year-old to have sex after "meeting on the internet", the "internet" the media is actually referring to is AOL.. AOL actively uses a large number of internet resources without reciprocation (e.g. AOL has a huge telecommunications network, but even simple things like internet mail can't flow through it, but have to pass through a central AOL/Internet gateway system in Virginia). Finally, AOL does nothing to improve the intelligence of its users. They wallow in ignorance. For 99% of them, AOL is the internet, wholly and completely, and there's no distinction in their minds between AOL's service and the actual internet beyond its doors... or that their behavior is generally unacceptable elsewhere... or that their software is the stuff of techie nightmares. My response to any AOL related question (and at this point I'll include the rest of their media empire) is "change services".

AOL Time Warner employees and shareholders should be hunted for sport.

nvidia - My experience: Crappy products. Really, really crappy. Too crappy for words. I can't possibly understand how anyone can even find them marginally acceptable. The fact that nvidia continues to exist, churning out crappy product after crappy product while inspiring geek lust in the obviously clueless, while 3dfx and S3 have mouldered away to nothing, fills me with disgust.
 

Prof.Wizard

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Mercutio said:
PW, the web should be a universal experience. The INTERNET should be a universal experience. Now I get 100-line-long e-mail messages with one line of text and 80-something lines of HTML crap that my plaintext e-mail client is more than happy to show me (thanks, Kevin). There are web sites requiring flash or javascript, things I don't want to use, thank you very much. The internet is no longer universal, and to the extent that it is not, I will not participate. I prefer the simple, universal tools I have always used.

OK, let's kill all interactive content then and return to IE3/NN3 eras or, even better, let's deactive images as well and compile a text-based Internet browser to run from DOS 1.0 :lol:
No... I'm not into it... Internet becomes universal when companies with insight can (and want to) collabarate (for once!) and make available rich content to end-users. We have to recognize this to both Microsoft and Macromedia for implementing Flash to IE6... and, afterall, Java runtime and Shockwave are freeware... why you make it an issue?!

AOL is evil for a lot of reasons. Their software breaks things. Established internet conventions, for one thing (been on a page with "special instructions for AOL users" recently?), not to mention other software on its users computers. AOL is a center for kiddie porn activity in the US, at least - almost always, when there is a news report about someone trying to entice a 12-year-old to have sex after "meeting on the internet", the "internet" the media is actually referring to is AOL.. AOL actively uses a large number of internet resources without reciprocation (e.g. AOL has a huge telecommunications network, but even simple things like internet mail can't flow through it, but have to pass through a central AOL/Internet gateway system in Virginia). Finally, AOL does nothing to improve the intelligence of its users. They wallow in ignorance. For 99% of them, AOL is the internet, wholly and completely, and there's no distinction in their minds between AOL's service and the actual internet beyond its doors... or that their behavior is generally unacceptable elsewhere... or that their software is the stuff of techie nightmares. My response to any AOL related question (and at this point I'll include the rest of their media empire) is "change services".

AOL Time Warner employees and shareholders should be hunted for sport.

I've heard this million of times. Fortunately (or unfortunately) AOL in Europe exists AFAIK only in Germany and the UK. We (in Greece and Italy) haven't got anything like it...

nvidia - My experience: Crappy products. Really, really crappy. Too crappy for words. I can't possibly understand how anyone can even find them marginally acceptable. The fact that nvidia continues to exist, churning out crappy product after crappy product while inspiring geek lust in the obviously clueless, while 3dfx and S3 have mouldered away to nothing, fills me with disgust.

You may hate pop music as well. But, usually, what is good sells. That's why Madonna made a fortune. That's why nVIDIA made a fortune.
 

Handruin

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Mercutio said:
I would, if I had hours to kill while I downloaded it, or if I had flash installed on any of my machines.

In short, no way.

PW, the web should be a universal experience. The INTERNET should be a universal experience. Now I get 100-line-long e-mail messages with one line of text and 80-something lines of HTML crap that my plaintext e-mail client is more than happy to show me (thanks, Kevin). There are web sites requiring flash or javascript, things I don't want to use, thank you very much. The internet is no longer universal, and to the extent that it is not, I will not participate. I prefer the simple, universal tools I have always used.

AOL is evil for a lot of reasons. Their software breaks things. Established internet conventions, for one thing (been on a page with "special instructions for AOL users" recently?), not to mention other software on its users computers. AOL is a center for kiddie porn activity in the US, at least - almost always, when there is a news report about someone trying to entice a 12-year-old to have sex after "meeting on the internet", the "internet" the media is actually referring to is AOL.. AOL actively uses a large number of internet resources without reciprocation (e.g. AOL has a huge telecommunications network, but even simple things like internet mail can't flow through it, but have to pass through a central AOL/Internet gateway system in Virginia). Finally, AOL does nothing to improve the intelligence of its users. They wallow in ignorance. For 99% of them, AOL is the internet, wholly and completely, and there's no distinction in their minds between AOL's service and the actual internet beyond its doors... or that their behavior is generally unacceptable elsewhere... or that their software is the stuff of techie nightmares. My response to any AOL related question (and at this point I'll include the rest of their media empire) is "change services".

AOL Time Warner employees and shareholders should be hunted for sport.

nvidia - My experience: Crappy products. Really, really crappy. Too crappy for words. I can't possibly understand how anyone can even find them marginally acceptable. The fact that nvidia continues to exist, churning out crappy product after crappy product while inspiring geek lust in the obviously clueless, while 3dfx and S3 have mouldered away to nothing, fills me with disgust.


All I wanted to do was show something funny, not start a war! :)

In all seriousness, you have well thought out and valid points. HTML e-mail can be nice is some respects, but I agree that it drives me nuts to get tons of garbage when there should only be 3 lines of message. Sometimes I find flash to be a nice enhancement, I’m for a little eye-candy here and there. If done correctly a user shouldn’t have to worry about having the plug in, instead they receive static content. Sites made entirely with flash drive me nuts…this is a bad idea for the exact reason you mention.

I won’t even touch AOL, Mercutio did a nice job summing them up. I can only agree more with how AOL doesn’t help people, it only makes them closed minded to the internet. Some don’t understand you can open a regular web browser to view a site, it doesn’t need to be through AOL. On top of that, some don’t realize the WWW is not AOL.

I can’t agree with nvidia however. My Asus 3400TNT still runs great to this day. Sadly Toms hardware convinced me it was the best at the time, but it didn’t set me wrong. I have since purchased an ATI Radeon 64 DDR and I am happy with it. With very few problems, this is a good card from ATI…their rage series never impressed me however. My ATI may not be the fastest card out there, but the price I paid has been worth it. I’ve had almost no problems related to drivers, and this was a concern for me. I do have one issue with monitor refresh in games, but I found a way to fix it.

When all the new cards come out, everyone who shelled out almost $400 for a Gforce2 elite ultra magnificent supreme super-duper will have to spend as much as I do to upgrade. The difference is that my card continues to play games equally as well, but my upgrade “loss” is much less.

Oh well…that flash site was for poking fun at windows…if you can’t view because it’s in flash there’s not much that can be done. Your not missing much, just a little side humor.
 

Tea

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Two great posts, Mercutio!

Actually you can download Flash for OS/2, and probably Linux too. I think it integrates with all the OS/2 browsers. But why on earth would you want to? Your comment about spending eight precious minutes just to look at a completely useless spinning motherboard logo says it all really. The link that started this thread is probably the first Flash-based content I have ever felt the slightest desire to look at. I probably have both Flash and Shockwave here (at home where I use a Windows box) on CD already. But I have better things to do with my time and bandwidth.
 

Prof.Wizard

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OK guys... you made your choice... I made mine...

At least I've seen what Windows RG is like... :mrgrn:
 

CougTek

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Mercutio said:
1.) Flash isn't available for every browser, even on Windows (it's not available for Mozilla, but works with Netscape 6), ...
I'm currently using Mozilla 0.98 and Flash works on it. Just use the Flash version for Netscape and it will run fine.
 

Mercutio

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Wouldn't know, Cougtek. I know Flash doesn't come with Mozilla, and that it's not worth the time to download it.

And Prof, I do hate pop music (rap, country, trash metal whatever the heck pop music is calling itself). But it's also very easy for me to avoid contact with it if I choose (if for no other reason than my ability to make my own music louder), unlike AOL, flash or nvidia.
 
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