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Jay

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Join date
22-Feb-2003
Last activity
29-Jun-2025
Posts
2,437

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Post
#143955
Topic
IMPORTANT: Forum software upgrade FAQs
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/143955/action/topic#143955
Time
I downloaded the Office 2004 trial. Entourage is very similar to Outlook on Windows and was much easier for me to set up, so I'll be picking up Office 2004 when the trial expires. I'll probably go with the Professional version because it comes with VirtualPC 7.

Quote
Originally posted by: Warbler
never! never will I turn to the darkside! PCs forever!

Although my favorite computer of all-time was my Commodore 64. I wish they still made Commodores today.


I've been thinking about picking up a Commodore 64. One of my friends had one when I was a kid and the games were a lot of fun. Been thinking about picking up an Amiga too for messing around. Their owners seem to love the shit out of those things.
Post
#143094
Topic
Post count: soon to be made irrelevant.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/143094/action/topic#143094
Time
Originally posted by: Moth3r
Originally posted by: Jay
...users may enter whatever title they wish, but the traditional high-level Jedi/Sith rankings will be reserved for those deemed worthy by the community.
If a user may enter whatever they wish, what's to stop them entering "Jedi Knight" or similar? I say forget the worthiness bit, and just let people have a free-for-all.


The reserved titles would be blocked. You could enter the text, but the software would spit out an error. Easy enough for me to filter out on the backend.

Now that I read it again, the whole "worthiness" bit sounds snotty and cliquey. Too subjective I think.

How about reserved user titles determined by post count and signup date simultaneously? Just as an example, let's say Jedi Knight is conferred upon someone with 1000 posts and at least 6 months of membership. They could race to build up the post count, but they'd be denied the title until their membership reached the 6 month mark.
Post
#143054
Topic
Post count: soon to be made irrelevant.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/143054/action/topic#143054
Time
One thing I've always found funny is the reflection post count seems to have on a member's status in an online community. Why is it that someone who's posted more than others is afforded more respect than those who post less? Shouldn't it be the quality of one's posts that determines how a member is perceived by the community?

One justification cited for post count validity is experience; a higher post count indicates that a member has been around longer and has put in more time on the boards.

Or does it? I've seen plenty of superfluous posts in order to artificially build up one's total post count, both here and elsewhere. When you have people inflating their post count with meaningless posts, it damages the credibility post count might otherwise afford to true contributors.

In my mind, a member's signup date and post history say a lot more about their value to the community than the number of posts they've made.

In the new forum software, your signup date and a link to your post history will be displayed prominently next to your avatar. It will be easy for people to see how long you've been around and just what you've been up to while you've been here.

What about advanced user titles? Can't they only be achieved by post count? With the launch of the new software, I'm returning the forum to the days when rankings were earned and voted upon by the community. Your fellow forum members will nominate you and votes will be cast. Post count will be irrelevant. No all-night posting benders to "earn" the title of Jedi Knight. Custom titles will be made available to everyone and users may enter whatever title they wish, but the traditional high-level Jedi/Sith rankings will be reserved for those deemed worthy by the community.

In addition, I will remove post count from beneath user avatars and place it in the user profile where it will receive far less attention. Post count will be stripped of its function--determing your title--and become merely another statistic.

Thoughts?
Post
#143101
Topic
Thread Subscriptions
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/143101/action/topic#143101
Time
The shortcomings of FuseTalk become more and more apparent as our membership grows.

Thread subscriptions will not carry over.

Subscription requests and management will be improved in the new software. You'll be able to subscribe to any thread at any time without posting in it, and you'll be able to delete thread subscriptions within your profile.
Post
#143001
Topic
AWK
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/143001/action/topic#143001
Time
Quote
Originally posted by: PSYCHO_DAYV
THAT IS IT !!! THIS ENDS RIGHT NOW. KEV AND ADAM, YOU ARE STILL WELCOME TO POST ON OT.COM, BUT IF I FIND OUT THAT THE TWO OF YOU CONTINUE THIS POINTS CRAP OR CAUSE ANY MORE PROBLEMS ON HERE I WILL SEE TO IT PERSONALLY THAT THE TWO OF YOU ARE BAND FOR LIFE.


And how exactly will you do this?

Everyone here needs to take a deep breath and calm down. Know that the new software will have an ignore function. You don't like someone? You'll never have to read a single post of theirs.

And enough of this DEAD THREAD stuff. Threads die when people stop posting. I've never seen another board anywhere on the web that actually kills posts via a single member's desire to see a thread die. Don't read the thread if it doesn't interest you. Simple.
Post
#142989
Topic
IMPORTANT: Forum software upgrade FAQs
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/142989/action/topic#142989
Time
Quote
Originally posted by: Bossk
So what made you switch? You were such a Windows shill before.


I wouldn't have called myself a shill, just someone who liked to build his machines to his liking and didn't find the Windows 2000/XP experience to be a negative one (Win98 and earlier are a different story entirely). I was also a big gamer when I first got into PCs back in 1998, and the Mac wasn't a good platform at that time if you wanted to play the latest games. I also had bad recollections of my mom's Power Mac from my junior high school days. That thing was a piece of garbage and was one of the reasons I went with Wintel when I bought my first PC and stayed away from Mac for all these years--sort of like a Mac user who hasn't used a Windows OS since Win98 and insists that Windows is complete trash.

I have several reasons for switching. PC building and tweaking used to be a fun hobby of mine, but now that I have more things occupying my time--including new, preferred hobbies--I'm not really interested in building my own PCs anymore. And there's no way I'm giving Dell $2000 for a high-end PC loaded with spyware and a bunch of garbage I don't want or need. My mom bought a pretty sweet Dell laptop at my recommendation late last year, and I was horrified at all the garbage they throw on there. The system tray was completely packed with all kinds of junk running at startup. Quite a different experience from the Dell purchased by the guy who lived across the hall from me in college. That thing rocked and was lightning-fast. Dell has gone so far downhill I almost want to cry.

Also, the bulk of my time spent on computers is for design work. Mac has always been the darling of the design community, so it was a logical move. I can now interact with other designers, printers, and agencies without fear of compatibility problems.

Geeks also like new toys. I had a lot of fun playing around with my Power Mac last night. There was some frustration, but overall it was a good experience. The Mail setup wizard was annoying because there was no way to bypass it and create accounts directly that I could see. It insisted on checking my login info during setup and was having problems connecting to my POP server (worked fine in Entourage), so it just sat there churning away for several minutes. Canceling the wizard closed Mail completely. Kind of dumb. Installing Tiger couldn't have been easier though.

And finally, OS X is pretty. I have a strong attraction to good aesthetics. Superficial, but it adds to the experience.

I still enjoy using computers, but their purpose in my life has shifted from mostly toy to mostly tool.
Post
#142434
Topic
Problem solved...Thanks, Jay
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/142434/action/topic#142434
Time
Quote
Originally posted by: ricarleite
Don't you guys think this is becoming a witch hunt? It's the third case, that I can remember, of people wanting for Jay to interfere into someone's posting. I belive the major reason for this is the lack of quality of the posting from the past few months, in which we all, and I specially include myself, are to blame for.


It took a lot of warnings before others were banned, and AWK will get the same opportunities those members did. He has nothing to worry about if he cleans up his act, which he says he will.

While I prefer a hands-off moderation style, one of the drawbacks is the appearance of "Please ban So-And-So" threads because troublemakers don't get immediate warnings like they would elsewhere.

I think that will change with the new forum software. I'll probably be enlisting some additional mods.
Post
#141046
Topic
IMPORTANT: Forum software upgrade FAQs
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/141046/action/topic#141046
Time
Sorry for the delayed reply. Been a bit busy with this whole marriage thing.

Tomorrow is the last official day of the honeymoon, so I'll be getting in a bit more R&R before getting back to work. I was working on the database when I left off, so I'll get that finished up this week. Then I need to polish the UI and we should be good to go.

Two big changes in my life recently. The first is, of course, being married. We got through the first week okay. Only 60 or 70 more years to go.

The second big change--and for a geek like me, probably the bigger of the two--is that I have a Power Mac G5 on its way. Yes, I'm making "the switch". Some specs:

Dual 2.5Ghz
1.5 gigs of RAM
GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB
Airport card (which will hopefully play nice with my Belkin router/wireless hub)
Bluetooth
250GB SATA HDD
Mighty Mouse

It has Panther pre-installed, but I ordered a copy of Tiger that I'll install before I do anything else. Same monitor for now (Planar PX191), but I plan on upgrading to a 23" 1920x1200 at some point and ditching my multimonitor setup.

Macromedia was kind enough to let me upgrade my Studio MX 6 Windows license to Studio 8 for Mac, so my development efforts should proceed fairly smoothly. Not sure if Adobe will be as kind with my Creative Suite; somehow I think I'm going to take it in the ass on that one. I'm keeping an old Windows box on hand so I can run ColdFusion Server and SQL Server and mimic the hosting environment of the site.

Some people suggested I wait until the Intel switch occurs, but that's next summer at the earliest and I have a feeling the first Mac OS to run on the Intel platform is going to be a bit buggy. I'll let other people work out those kinks and then upgrade to a Mac/Intel machine (Mintel?) in a couple years.
Post
#140741
Topic
One-Man Star Wars Trilogy - Lambs Theatre, NYC
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/140741/action/topic#140741
Time
My wife took me to see the One-Man Star Wars Trilogy at Lambs Theatre in New York on Thursday night. For those of you who haven't heard about it, this guy runs through the entire trilogy in about an hour. Really entertaining show from someone who's obviously watched the trilogy at least as many times as anyone on these boards. I highly recommend you check it out if you can.

Lambs Theatre
130 West 44th Street (between 6th ave and Broadway)
New York, NY 10036

We got our tickets through Telecharge.com. $45 per person. It's a nice intimate theater and it looked like every seat is a good seat. We got lucky and landed the front row. He accidentally spit on the couple next to us. Hilarious.

Go see it.
Post
#137303
Topic
IMPORTANT: Forum software upgrade FAQs
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/137303/action/topic#137303
Time
The beta forums are on a separate standalone server, which is where we'll be doing our testing. Once the forum is considered good enough for live use, the entire site will be moved to that server and the domain redirected to the new IP address. Then I'll begin development on the rest of the site so we can start running articles, comics, contests, reviews, etc.
Post
#136684
Topic
R.I.P. Chief Justice Rehnquist
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/136684/action/topic#136684
Time
Quote
My simplified opinion: I think that we were right to go over and fight the terrorists/Taliban and bring them to justice. We DID NOT start the war- the suicidal Al-Quida maniacs did that. The fact that we've stayed over there for so long is troubling, however. If Bush has a reason for doing this (besides oil), he apparently doesn't trust the public with it and I don't like that. If I was the father of a soldier that was killed in Iraq, I would be EXTREMELY upset because I still wouldn't know what we were fighting for.

So I disagree with Bush on his handling of this. But I didn't say they "started a war and now wish to conquer the world"; nothing personal, but that's just plain stupid.


Going into Afghanistan made sense. We thought Bin Laden was there.

As for Iraq, there weren't any "terrorists" in Iraq until we invaded. There was never a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. They used Iraq as a rallying point after we turned the country into a war zone.

I seriously question the intelligence of any middle class American who voted for Bush, especially his second term. Anyone find it interesting that the Bush family gets its wealth from oil? Anyone find it interesting that the Bush family is so very very tight with the Saudi royal family? Anyone with a reasonable view of the future can see the looming oil crisis and what it means to our country. Our entire economy is based on cheap, abundant oil. Tons of goods are made from petroleum byproducts, and the goods are all shipped on ships, planes, and trucks that require huge amounts of fuel. China is growing, India is growing. They'll need oil like crazy in a few years. Oil is getting scarce and you can bet the U.S. is positioning itself to have a firm grasp on middle eastern oil for the future. This "war" has nothing to do with terrorism--nothing at all.

And the Bush family is laughing all the way to the bank.

We're all playthings for rich people.