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using(Rant rant = new Rant(RantMode.On))
{
A few years ago I stopped getting the newspaper delivered because I usually peruse the news sites when I get to work in the am. It used to be where you could go to CNN.com, NBC.com, MSNBC.com, LATimes.com, NYTimes.com, etc, and actually READ articles. I enjoyed stating my day with thinking through the news articles.
Now, they're mostly pages of video links. MSNBC.com has different sections, and stories often appear in 2 or even 3 sections - just to fill the page. It's mind numbing and doesn't really make you pause and think.
NBC.com and CNN.com are just as ridiculous with large images that often link to videos.
LA and NY times sites are less of a mess, but still contain mostly videos.
In all cases it takes FOOOOOOREEEEVVVVERRR for these pages to load because they're pulling all these images. Clicking one takes FOOOOOOREEEEVVVVERRR to load because they go get the clip. And I have a fast machine.
Then, the clips all start with 30 second ads for stupid stuff I don't care about. Then the video's actual content is often a 30 second blurb from a reporter with no real content about what's actually happening 
Sometimes there's text associated with the "story", sometimes it's just the vid. Sometimes the vid doesn't load at all, so if I want to read (hear) about the story, I have to go to another site.
Me thinks I'm going to order the paper again. If I want to watch vids, I'll go to Netflix.
}
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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I like the BBC [^] even though they are a little bit leftie and biased they still report the news rather than droning on about their own view of the world.
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This is my point exactly![^]
Instead of just showing me the TEXT of the article, I get this $hit.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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It's a way of paying for the service. If it's subscription free then they need to sell advertising space. Would your company provide its services at no cost to the consumer?
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Spot on! The sad thing is that this seems to be the norm these days.  My brother in-law needs me to take a look at his 3 year old laptop...again...because he says it's really slow loading web pages. I suspect most of his issues are related to the practices you described. I have seen talk here in the lounge of a way to stop videos and crap from loading. Anyone?
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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Can't we just unplug the interweb?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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I use adblock[^] which stops quite a bit of crap from loading.
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Interesting. I have used that approach in the past - not really sure why I stopped.
Anyway, 
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kmoorevs wrote: I have seen talk here in the lounge of a way to stop videos and crap from loading. Anyone?
Blocking via the the Hosts-File, maybe? http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm[^]
I did that after somebody mentioned it here and replaced Adblock with that. Works quite well.
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I switched to uBlock with the hosts file and I'm quite satisfied!
Hogan
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Yahoo News now has this REALLY crappy endless vertical layout where articles are 1) repeated endlessly and 2) mixed in with fake "sponsored" articles. Then if you open an article in a new tab you'll find that the endless vertical list of articles (usually in a different order) is repeated at the end of the article you just read.
Looks like the folks at ESPN just copied much of Yahoo News' format. 
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
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Start with downloading the MVPS-hostfile and update your own hostfile. You don't even want to block that crap from displaying, you want it to not download in the first place.
As for what is "news", I'd guess that our definitions vary. I don't need the mainstream opinion on yesterday's news - today's facts will be fine.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Kevin Marois wrote: NBC.com and CNN.com are just as ridiculous with large images that often link to videos.
And I have to disable my hosts file for those videos to work (thanks to the embedded ads). 
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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It's working, then.
They're getting you to open a huge number of pages, and therefore register an even more huge number of ad "views".
Remember the Golden Rule: If it's free for you to use, your actions become the source of income.
Some of us were bitching talking about how companies would pervert everything to make money out of us on-line before the marketing and advertising people even started turning 93% of the web into bollocks.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Custom adblock rules let you block anything on the page you don't want to see.
It's the reason why everyone should have a basic idea about how DOM is structured even if you think web development is a giant cluster-elephant and otherwise want nothing to do with it.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Agreed. All that, plus the video, when and if it loads, may contain so much background noise and/or US drawl that I as a non-native english speaker have a very hard time understanding it. I can understand that they want to use the media with the highest information density - but there's no point if the video doesn't really add to the spoken text - and that's more often the case then not.
I avoid video-only 'articles' as a rule, they're a waste of time.
The only news sites I visit on a regular basis is BBC for general news, http://phys.org/[^], for the more technical stuff, and various software-related sites (interestingly, the latter are the ones that make the least use of non-text media, so I don't have a specific preference).
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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I have disabled Flash on my browser. At least on Chrome, So if the video wants to play it cannot and that takes care of 90% of the crap on the web in the browser. When I encounter the rare spot where I do want to view the video. I either pull it up in another browser or enable flash for a bit. Either way it works for me.
As for news sites. They are really annoying. I use twitter alot for news anymore but it still tries to link to a video site sometimes.
To err is human to really mess up you need a computer
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Just got a reply to post from June 2004! 
That´s 11 years or about 1 solar cycle 
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Was it He Who Must Not Be Named telling you his solution was better?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Who, Member 5688443 ? Nah, he´s new rarely here  .
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Now I have a new hobby. Once in a while I will from now on go back and answer someone's most ancient posts and then watch the discusion here..
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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Maybe the <small>[]E-mail me if someone replies to this message</small> option should be expanded to hold an expiration date. Anyone responding after that date should be sent a message to stop necroing old threads.
That said, while I would love such a functionality on certain sites, I don't see it as a big issue on CP.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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What to use as an alternative to Acronis?
I've used them for years but their newest version is garbage. It used to just work and now it's been dumbed down to where it's an buggy, unreliable POS. I had also purchased their Disk Director 12 in a bundle deal and when I uninstalled True Image 2015 it removed system hooks and Disk Director no longer works either. They won't respond to any form of communication, all communication just goes into a black hole.
I've used EaseUS before, but it's been years. Had to use it one time when I couldn't get True Image to clone a disk so I downloaded the EaseUS free version and it worked flawlessly.
Also looking at ShadowProtect by StorageCraft and according to research is the premier but twice the price of EaseUS, is it worth the extra or would EaseUS be good enough for a lone developer with a single desktop system?
New version: WinHeist Version 2.1.0 new web site.
When you are dead you don't know it, it's only difficult for others.
It's the same when you're stupid.
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Doesn't the old version still work?
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