Don’t, Just Don’t!
Blonde Sense has an embedded video of a commercial opposing the stimulus that apparently Jersey Cynic doesn’t like.
Fine, you want to make a point about the damn commercial, no problem … except when it auto-starts and blares out of my speakers, that can’t be stopped, that can’t be turned down, that scares the cats.
The offender is well down the page and is a Flash module.
Don’t subject people to this crap. If someone stops by your blog at work, their cover is blown, and they will have to explain what they are doing. Give visitors a little control.
I didn’t comment over there, because I don’t want to deal with the blaring sound.
9 comments
aMEN.
Another thing that gets me are websites where the author has autoloading music…that you cannot even turn down, let alone OFF.
And some of them are playing the internetz version of muzak…MIDIs!
Evil, EVIL people.
LOL I hear that! Actually… I don’t! LOL Bryan (and anyone else) I have three wonderful plugins for Firefox I couldn’t live without that take care of that garbage nicely.
NoScript
FlashBlock
Adblock Plus
Adblock Plus Filter Lists
They will give you back control over what you want to see or not (and as an added bonus, make browsing a lot faster!) 🙂
And don’t worry Bryan… my site has none of that garbage. 😉 And everything that is there is on/offable (images, modules, sections, items… the user has control over what they want to see, depending of their membership level).
I hate those sites that offer *a wonderful user experience* and offer no way, or very limited ways, for the visitor to control that *experience*.
One of the big problems you run into is that there are still people on dial-up, and they get hung up waiting for the site to load.
That one reason most of the graphic I use are gifs and things like the map and dog are the same on every post so they come from the cache. The top banner is enough of a load.
You had to bring up midis, Catnapping. I truly hate them. They remind me of those tinny, out of tune toy pianos without the charm. If I have a cat in my lap, sudden noises are just not a good idea.
I know I can block them, Kryten, but why should I have to? Doesn’t common courtesy make incumbent on people to offer visitors the choice of not downloading and playing multimedia extravaganzas? I don’t even embed, just a link to the media if someone is interested.
What really ticked me off was I was reading something when it went off, and will never get to finish the post.
Now you are just being ornery Bryan. 😉 You know as well as I do from many years experience, that if you expect things from people, especially if you expect people *to do the right thing*, you are going to spend most of your time being disappointed. You were a cop, you know it as well as you know your name. And that’s just people who do it on purpose… Then you have the other group who *have the best intentions* and don’t really have a clue (the worst of these are those damned *do gooders!*, you know… those ones (like many Republicans) who absolutely believe they know better than you what you need to make you happy etc. They should all be shot.)
It’s why tools such as those above exist, and why they are so damned popular. Some people given the choice and chance to do the write thing or the wrong thing will choose to do the right thing. Many won’t. If all humans were sweetness and light, we wouldn’t need police, militaries or even to a degree, Governments. However, most people are just either selfish or stupid bastards. And often both.
I don’t *expect* anyone to do the right thing, even if I know they want to. Shit happens, people let us down because they simply don’t realise they don’t have as much control over their existence as they would like to think they have. 🙂 I control my own environment as much as I possibly can and try never to rely on anyone. Occasionally… I am very pleasantly surprised by someone. 🙂
My Grandfather (May he RIP) gave me much good advice, including: “If you rely on people and you expect things of people, you will spend most of your life disappointed. If you expect nothing, you may sometimes be very pleasantly surprised.” Of course, there are rare exceptions. It’s taken me a lifetime to spot them. 🙂
I also try very hard not to give people expectations of me. Especially given my life the past few years. I can barely rely on myself, I surely will not allow anyone else to. Hopefully, I surprise some people now and then. LOL
Actually, as I was repairing a toilet in one of the places my Mother manages, I got into a discussion with the tenant about people calling the police because of a barking dog. What in hell is a cop supposed to do about it, shoot the dog?
There are noise ordinances, but a dog can’t come close to the sound level required for those to kick in. It’s a dog – you can’t impress it with being a cop. You check to ensure it isn’t barking for an important reason, like a fire or break in, but you can’t always tell who it belongs to, and you don’t knock on doors at 2AM unless you are sure the people are involved.
People have a lot of unreasonable expectations for authority, when they would be better off finding out who the dog belongs to and talking to them directly.
Oh, I don’t actually expect people to act rationally or politely – it just would be a better world if they did. I generally expect people to be self-serving jerks and am rarely disappointed. Down here I expect it even when rationally they would be better off personally if they showed some civility. The GOP equates manners with weakness. They have never been exposed having me call them “Sir” or “Madam” during a traffic stop. There are many kinds of polite. They have forgotten how totally devastating anything that contains the words “bless his/her heart”, is going to be. We used to have superb forms of nastiness cloaked in kind words in the South. Our politicians once murdered each other, but they were unfailingly polite in public. It’s a lost era only dimly represented in out legislatures these days.
Hah! Yes… So true. 🙂 Just about every area in the World have developed their own *polite patois*. We have ours, you have yours… It used to be reserved for *outsiders*, so they wouldn’t really know they’ve just been told to shove their head where the sun doesn’t shine, but the locals do! Now… well, the rules have all changed. Literacy is dropping like a rock in a pond, and respect for *the way things were done* is all but dead. Ahhh well… Welcome to the ‘brave new world'(tm) The young can have it, I’m sure it will bring them what they deserve. 😉
I count myself exceptionally lucky that I have a few people in my life that I know I can trust, so long as I am realistic and understanding. Sometimes they have bad days at the same time I do, then we all feel extra miserable because we can’t help the other. It’s something called friendship. Even so, I ensure that I do not take them for granted, or have *expectations* of them, and they do the same, and we get on very well. 🙂 Everyone else, is an acquaintance. If they let me down (assuming I allow them the opportunity to do so), I just shrug and smile and move on. 🙂
And yeah… It would be a much nicer World if we all got along. But we don’t and it’s a cesspit. 🙂 The trick is to make damned sure the old shovel stays in good condition. If it stops working, then we are really in the… 😉 LOL
You know, the GOP only fools the uneducated and illiterate masses that believe such things as “words have power” or “the word represent the thing it describes” or “the map is the territory”. People such as myself know that words only have the power I give them, a word is simply (at best) a poor attempt at describing a thing, and a map most definitely is *NOT* the territory! (and any veteran of any war knows how true that is!) 🙂 But then… I studied such thinkers are Alfred Korzybski (A Polish-American Philosopher and Scientist for those wondering). More people should take the time to educate themselves. 🙂
Mt Grandfather and the military taught me how to be exceedingly polite! And my good friends will tell you that I am at my most dangerous when I am exceedingly polite, concise and quietly spoken. If I then smile, you better be a faster runner than a racehorse! 😉
One of the things I have always liked about real city people is that they understand about “personal space”. When things are crowded you learn to value your space. Most problems I encountered living in a city were the clash between city and country people. Unlike the propaganda, city people don’t get into fights because they aren’t interested in dying for nothing. Country people think fights end when you knock the other guy down, not realizing that in the city it is always to the death or it wasn’t worth it in the first place.
I never had any problems in the city. The “bad people” knew I was armed and didn’t mess with me. It was only in the suburbs that trouble started, because people couldn’t tell the difference between truly “bad” people and blow-hards. I hated hiring anyone who wasn’t from the city, because they caused trouble when they were supposed to be stopping it.
I give people a chance, but I really expect them to fail, so it doesn’t bother me when they do. Things would be smoother if they took the effort to educate themselves before they started offering an opinion, but they only hear views that reinforce their prejudices. When the times get tough you know they will be culled early so you don’t invest a lot of interest in them.
Yeah… I agree. I don’t like the way things are a bit. But it *IS* the way things are. I’m not very good at ignoring truth and facts, or pretending something is other than what it is. That’s probably why I enjoy such things as Diskworld. 😉 I know it’s fiction and fantasy… but I love the satire of the ‘Real World'(tm). Sir Pratchett is a genius, and obviously knows what the World is really like. I suppose writing is his way of escaping the reality now and then. He writes to help keep him sane, and I read what he writes to help keep me sane. 🙂
I’d love to ‘cull the herd’… but there is no guarantee it would make things much better, and when does one stop? And what happens when the solution becomes as bad as, or worse than, the problem? And who get’s to play G-d? (No to mention the many and varied practical difficulties involved in sorting out the wheat from the chaff)! 🙂 So, I just leave it all up to G-D (assuming He actually does exist). I just keep reminding myself I don’t have much longer to put up with it all. LOL
I saw many things during my tour in Cambodia. When I first arrived, I just wanted to take out a lot of anger I had on as many people as possible. Then, possibly for the first time in my life, I met some truly innocent people… Villagers with nothing, and the Khmer Rouge and thieving gangs were even taking what little they had. It changed me and my men. Yeah… once upon a time, I would have happily destroyed the World. 🙂 Now… I just would love to take out the trash, but I know I can’t. So I just do what little I can when I can, and I’m content. 🙂 We saved hundreds of people and families in Cambodia, and I took out a LOT of the garbage! Yeah… When the end comes for me, I’ll be smiling. 🙂
There are too many days, and too many ways when I feel like Sam Vimes.
It wouldn’t take much to convince me I live in the septic tank of another universe, a depository for all of its refuse and rejects. When you look at the “rich and famous” you know that there wasn’t an intelligence test in the classification system that is being used. Obviously human evolution has gone off the rails somewhere.
It’s not enough to take out the garbage, you have to convince society to stop producing it. Currently all of the incentives are for worthless consumers, rather than producers. Production has been ditched, foisted on “lesser beings”, while those that are held up as examples, as goals that people should aspire to, are all wastrels. The “important people” don’t make anything, they move paper around, or play games. It is small wonder that the world is in so much trouble.