Alternate.org

We just got the Photoshop 6 upgrade yesterday at work, and I have a few things to comment on. First of all, Adobe could have taken some pointers from Apple as far as install ation goes… let’s just let it be said we had some major serial number issues. When you enter your serial number into the installer, Photoshop 5.5 conveniently hides the dash and the last 3 digits, so you can’t just go into the About box in 5.5 to get your serial number for the Upgrade… and our documentation wasn’t great, so yeah. Headaches. But I must say that on the other hand, Photoshop 6 is probably the most feature-rich version yet (I know, I know… but I thought the magnetic lasso tool was cool in 5.0). There’s this whole thing with adding notes to places on the document that can be hidden (like if someone else is going to be coding a web layout, or something). I won’t go into a full feature breakdown here, but if you have the means, I strongly suggest checking it out. Download the trial, or something.

From WiredNews:
“Half the technology that’s in there [Windows 98 & Windows ME] is stuff that an end-user will never use.”

Great. Then WHY IS THAT STUFF IN THERE? Oh. It’s because MS could give a flying fuck about their ‘end-users.’ Apparently (duh) Windows ME and 98 are slower because of all the crap that goes on in the background, mostly the Active Desktop (I love typing that, because I don’t have one…:> ). So this dude wrote this little app called 98Lite to divorce the system with all that extra crap that comes along with it (IE, for one). This tends to make the system respond ‘snappier.’ Hrm. My system is snappy without any sort of third-party software, but whatever.

Okay, so this might sound like fiction to you, but bear with me here: I was watching football this Sunday (I was at my parents’ house, what can I say?) and despite the fact that my father has a satellite dish, he had it turned off so he could get CBS.

Now here’s where the rant starts: I could not believe all the 3D bullshit that was going on during the game and halftime report. There were 3D boxes of stats flying all over the screen… the scorebox would fly in, with the “1st and 10” box popping up, then arbitrarily zooming away. I mean, I thought I was watching the fucking Terminator, with all the robotics going on. Isn’t there enough to see during a football game; enough to keep your eye on? Now we have to watch little boxes zooming in and out as well, just to see what the score is?

Obviously (and here comes the second part of the rant), I can’t blame CBS for this… after all, wasn’t it FOX who did this first, with that horrible SuperBowl coverage a couple years ago? As I recall, SGI themselves did the work for it, and there were giant scoreboards materializing out of the endzones and shit. Then eventually, of course, a toned down version of all that got introduced to their coverage every Sunday… but the fact that CBS had the audacity to absolutely copy everything FOX does (after all, I sort of expect that kind of thing from FOX, don’t you?), and badly as well, that annoys me. Case in point: the halftime report consisted of this giant interface (after all, that’s what they’ve become), which only had to do one thing: show us the names of the two teams who were playing elsewhere, with each team’s respective score next to their name… maybe an injury report or something, but that’s basically it. What did CBS have to do? Animate every fucking metal pane containing each team’s logo, their city and their score, along with 12 other things on the screen, with very little of it actually legible.

And that’s not even the worst part of all this. What really got on my nerves after a while were the SOUNDS. These little ‘skrreeee’ sounds of what I’m assuming the interface, had it been real, would have sounded like. Give me a fucking break. Now, the little thing that pops up letting me know that a flag was thrown, that can be useful. But does it have to rotate in from the screen like a robot? If all of this were being used on, I don’t know, Battlebots or something, that would be totally understandable. Robots fighting eachother, hence the metal scoreboard. But football? Come on. Even baseball could use some more energy… the only worse sport I can see this being used on is hockey… which they’re already started on with the little highlight that follows the puck around the screen during playoffs. If you need this thing, I’ve got a tip for you: don’t fucking watch fucking hockey.

But I digress.

All of this stuff stems from ESPNs use of graphical ‘interfaces’ during SportCenter. But ESPN does it right: all the graphics are there to get you excited about what they’re talking about, and display the information coherently. FOX, CBS and who knows who else (I’m assuming the other NFL-covering networks do the same things) are just moving little metal pieces around, which has nothing to do with anything. Okay. That’s it.

Okay, people, settle down. This is just getting way out of hand. Someone ACTUALLY purchased a PS2 for $5100. Yes, that’s $4700 over the MSRP. It’s just a new game console. This is crazy. I don’t even want to be around this Christmas. I could see this kind of hysteria if it, like, cured AIDS or Cancer or something. But a gaming system? That’s just retarded.

Note: If you use Netscape on either platform, the images below probably seem to be on top of eachother. This is due to a lack of proper CSS implementation in Netscape. This will be fixed soon, however don’t hold your breath. The images aren’t that important, anyway.

Hey… I’ve got a great idea… let’s get a whole bunch of geeks together, and put them on a shirt. People who post on techsites need their own t-shirts, too, I guess. Jesus. What the fuck is this shit? Like I need a fucking shirt to let people know that I post on a fucking website. Fuck. And with Bill Gates in the background, too. How stupid is that? Gladiators, HA. Whatever. Billy boy is the one with all the money, not you guys. As far as I can tell, he’s won already.

// image removed because Netscape CSS sucks.. the cars I’m talking about are the Pontiac Aztek and Hyundai Santa Fe //

What the hell were these people thinking? Did they have a contest to see who could make the mot butt-fucking ugly SUVs in the world? I mean, the Excursion isn’t pretty, but these two things make it look like a fucking Rolls-Royce. Jesus. If you or anyone you know buys either one of these damn things, let me know so I can punch you in the fucking face. Fuck.