I feel the need to vent about a few annoying things that have happend lately...
Microsoft: And to think I was so nice to them before (see below), well things have changed a little bit. The first bit to change my mind was my adventures with Activemovie. Active movie in itself is a very cool little program -- plays nearly all multimedia files, and quite nicely. On a 200 Mhz machine (such as mine) the Mpeg files on the OEM cd play very nice, even at full screen. But there lies a very disturbing problem with Activemovie, Apple's Quicktime seems to completely disable the audio codecs -- I've had that happen several times on different machines. I also lost it when changing soundcards -- even reloading Windows95 did nothing to help. Try to get help on this from Microsoft though.... they won't even email you outside the 'service period' unless you pony money up front. And thier vast and extensive knowledge bases appear to have no information about it at all. Then there was intellipoint -- I'm using a wheel mouse now -- all neat and fun, but I didn't have the right driver (the original OEM versions came with no support for the wheel at all). So I go to Microsoft and download the current Intellipoint software, so my wheel will work. The software only works with Microsoft mice, but that wasn't enough -- nooo -- you had to have intellipoint version 1.1 to install the software. I search around, and find two 1.0 disks, and disk 2 of the 1.1 software. Neither one works, so now I have to scrounge around elsewhere to find it. Why the big hassle? Are they afraid that I'd buy a Genius Net Mouse and try to use thier software on it? Fwiw The Genius Net Mice are almost as useful as the wheel mice (they use 2 buttons instead) and cost about a fourth of what the MS mice do. And if you haven't read about my feeling on Frontpage and the destruction of customized image maps, let's just say they're not friendly rants.
ellen: I get infobeat updates delivered each day, and here was a recent blurb...
***
DeGeneres, Heche leaving Hollywood
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Soon after a healthy dose of Hollywood
bashing, Ellen DeGeneres says she and Anne Heche are quitting
Tinseltown for at least a year. "We've quit our agents, let
go of our publicist. We're selling our house and leaving
town," DeGeneres said in Tuesday's Los Angeles Times. The
couple told the paper's Sunday magazine Hollywood turned against
them after they and DeGeneres' character on "Ellen"
came out last year. "I know everyone is going to say our
leaving is just another bid for attention, but what we've found
is this is a very hard town to be truthful in," said
DeGeneres, who hinted the couple may relocate to San Francisco or
Ojai, near Santa Barbara. See http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2557426041-613
And this wasn't the first one -- a few days earlier was the blasting they gave Hollywood for not recognizing thier combined talents. Good Grief -- will these women ever stop whining? Nothing is thier fault -- never mind the fact that Hollywood caters more to homosexuals than it does to Black and Hispanic audiences combined -- and there are far more of them than of her. And apart from the CBS Sunday night lineup -- little or nothing is aimed at us boring, church going, Bible believing folk who would prefer a little less objectionable entertainment (check the reviews, many times I like a movie, but have to put up with what I feel is frequently unneeded language, violence, or plot points). Ellen had a tv series and a movie, both of which turned out to be less than funny -- Anne has managed to be featured prominantly in two less than stellar releases recently herself. Maybe trying to be the poster children for lesbian lust has clouded their collective judgements a little lately. Maybe dropping of the face of the planet for a while might restore a sense of vision. Maybe I should quit before I start whining like they are....
Since I swiped one of their stories, the least I could do was include this little plug...
If you'd
like to subscribe to other InfoBeat products or modify your
current settings, visit our web site at http://www.infobeat.com