My family had a water heater issue many years ago...it broke and flooded our basement at our old place long ago....I am glad to hear you got it fixed. :)

(Also while yer at it, could you come over and repaint my house? If yer cheap i'll gladly toss ya a few bucks ;D)

What(as J Jonah Jameson said)....you're serious? That was over 6 decades back.

Also as for Watership Down: I have heard of it...will watch it maybe someday(watched skyscraper today with the family).

YT was using kid's account data and other info they entered plus other data(Like videos watched/etc) to profile them for targeted ads....here in the US that's a no no in the eyes of the powers that be(or they want to use it enact other laws or make money from fines, maybe)...basically YT would track kid's viewing habits and data and use it to sell ads to kids who likely then pestered their parents or used their parents CC details(some parents give it to them for any reason, oddly enough, due to laziness or not being smart with such data) online.

As a result, the FTC fined YT big time(170 Million) and as a result YT has now clamped down on content of creators due to a problem it created/bad things it did & is preparing to implement the new FTC guidelines in a haphazard manner that only allows one to set their videos to kids only or adults only, even though the new FTC guidelines allow for a mixed audience category. Many suspect that it along with other prior measures is a push to push small time and non corporate channels off of YT with the "threat" of FTC fines or YT bans.

As for why, YT is losing money hand over fist....google bought YT hoping to turn a profit and make it too large to fail/profitable and now they seem to want to "trim the fat" as it were, and also get more dependable/"safe" commercial content here which is easier to advertise on/etc.

A fine would come from the FTC if a creator labelled their content the wrong way(for kids or for adults) and broke one of the new FTC guidelines...they are sort of similar to the laws for what words/etc can be said/shown on some tv stations in the US.

Also people want to do that movement to get YT(not the FTC) to change it's rules(which are seemingly implementing the FTC guidelines improperly so as to cause confusion in labeling videos and could likely cause people to label improperly) to allow for mixed audience content/etc so that said creators can label their content properly and avoid FTC fines.

Basically YT did bad and got fined, and passed the responsibility to creators with sloppily implemented changes that are likely made in such a manner to force people off of YT in various ways, and creators want YT to implement the guidelines in a more correct/fair/clear manner.

No more chores! I'm done with them for at least the next millennium... except that I still have to do the whole reformatting and installing Visual Studio thing... but other than that I'm not lifting a finger.

I was joking about Flash.

Well I only mentioned it because it has superb animation, and it's very good. I've almost considered reading it as well, but I have higher priorities.

Well they definitely shouldn't be doing that! In fact, they shouldn't be taking any data from anyone, and that should be illegal!

Well I understand the categories for adults only and mixed audience, but why should there be a kids only category? Are you saying that if there's a video meant for children to watch then adults aren't allowed or able to watch it? And for that matter, how do they even know how old anyone is? A lot of people don't even have accounts, and the ones who do could lie about their age, anyway.

I always thought that YouTube was very popular and successful, and now they even have subscription stuff similar to Netflix, which seems to be catching on. And frankly, even like 13 years ago they seemed to be doing fine, or at least they weren't losing money, and as far as I know everything was free then! It takes a real idiot to lose money on something which has virtually no overhead!

Well it seems like a very BS way to handle a BS law that should have been implemented in a better way in the first place.

EDIT: In any case, I think there will always be a place for that sort of thing, so if YouTube falls apart then I'm betting that something similar will take its place and be as good or better.

Fair enough. :)

I love a lot of more dark, touching animation, so maybe i'll see it someday soon.....I also like Secret of Nimh and other films.

Agreed that they should punish companies who do it, but YT is passing the buck to creators, sadly.

It's so that parents can only allow kids to watch stuff that's very kid friendly if they so choose, and know which videos/etc fit that category.

They are popular, but they(YT) make little per video view.....like a penny per view or a few pennies.

And there is MASSIVE overhead....those videos use a ton of bandwidth.

Agreed

It costs a good amount to start and run such a site, sadly, and some like to smear any competition so that the financial centers(banks/etc) are less likely to want to work with them.....so it might not be so easy....still, I hope it can happen if needed.

I've seen that as well, and some other stuff, like the old animated Hobbit and The Last Unicorn, and some other weird stuff even, but I don't know that I can think of anything else like what you describe. There's one which I think is called The Black Crystal or something like that, which you may like but I haven't seen it.

Judging by your response, either you slightly misinterpreted what I said or maybe I'm possibly misinterpreting you, or you just slightly changed the subject or something. In any case, what I meant was that companies like YouTube, or any company, shouldn't be allowed to keep track of any user data ever for any reason. I'm sorry that my initial statement was a bit vague.

Well they may be a ton of bandwidth in total for all the people who download it, but do you mean pennies per video or pennies per view of each video? Because if it's per view then that should actually recoup the cost. In any case, if there are advertisements then I'd think it's per view.

But I meant if YouTube collapsed and was defunct, then they wouldn't smear competition, and it would even be competition, because there would be nobody with whom to compete, so someone else could easily step in and take their place. Additionally, "smearing" is also known as slander, which is illegal, by the way, so unless they want to be sued into oblivion (which in light of the new information, they might be almost there anyway), they should avoid doing it.

That one was made with puppets and is The Dark Crystal iirc(they also are making an online prequel show now btw)....you should def watch it sometime.

As for LOTR/Hobbit...did you see all the old animated ones?

I was just musing on how YT passed the responsibility for it to users and creators, which sucks.

It costs a ton to send that video data to people, much more in some cases than is made from ad revenue. That's what I meant. The YT/video sharing site model is not a very profitable one as is, sadly, as advertisers get discounts to encourage them to advertise there.

YT and others smear them right now while YT is a thing, for various reasons....and some dislike the openness of other platforms so they smear them to silence them or to try to do so.

Also they do it by labeling said sites with the buzzwords of the day which make it hard to prove they are doing it and to get more to agree with them(buzzwords like: r*cist, n*zis, etc). And usually those doing it are random people so it's harder to sue them all or profitable/cost effective to do so for the most part, and you'd need to prove intent here among other things to even sue successfully.

Oh yeah. I think I was thinking of something else, but I don't remember what it was called. Maybe Black Cauldron or something.

I think I just saw The Hobbit, and it was a very long time ago.

Well ok, but then how did they stay in business for like 15 years?

Oh, I see. So they just mess up the search words and tags or something like that?

That one is good as well...it even has a very old game based on it. :)

There are a few others as well. Google bought them out, and they did so to have a platform to push their own message/etc on, even if at a loss. They also hoped it would become too big to fail...and in a way it has.

No, but they or their friends/fans in msm/news run "news stories" labeling competition as such all the time.

(Also friend invite sent....it's a long time coming and overdue, I think :) )

I didn't realize it was a musical. And I don't remember any scene like that from the newer movies. Was it in the novel?

Well that's definitely slander.

I just accepted the request before reading this. I wasn't sure how long it had been sitting there, because I usually don't notice the alerts in the corner of the screen (I don't usually get them though, anyway) and some pages don't even show them for some reason! So it's good that it hadn't been on there for a week.

It is an older film....and they made a few...also, it's not always singing, but there is a good deal of singing in them iirc.

They have legal loopholes like labeling such "opinion pieces", not news articles. Also, a good number of them have a ton of money to fight lawsuits if they have to in court.

Yup :)

(Also sorry for the low ratings you got above....the trolls seem to be hitting you now too. o.0)

Well here's an update, but not a reply to your most recent post (I read it and I'm not ignoring you, but you didn't have any questions for me to answer and I honestly can't think of anything that I want to say in response - sorry).

Anyway, I got the converter box for my TV and tested my consoles, which work fine (it's a really great converter!). I couldn't get the computer to connect to the TV though, and it turns out that the S-Video cable I had hooked up isn't plugged into the computer, and I couldn't even find a port for it! I know I had it working before, but maybe I had an adapter and I unplugged it to make room for something else. Oh well, I'll fix that too.

I also looked up videos about the reformatting and it seems like DBAN might be the best one for me to use, and looks pretty great and also easy to use. Like I said, I have some backup to do and a few other preliminary steps that I want to do before I do the reformat (honestly, I'm thinking that I'll probably do it in very early January, after the holidays and all, because if anything goes wrong then I don't want to have to mess with all of that during that time).

I don't really know of anything else to say at the moment but there's your update.

EDIT: BTW, who's the man in the photograph?

Oh, Max Payne. I knew the name sounded familiar. Max Payne is one of my favorites. In the second game I remember being trapped in a fenced-in yard and having to kill about 50 people in a row without healing during the fight!

UPDATE: I just need to figure out where the hell I put my Windows 7 CD - argh! People say, "It's always something," but with me it's always everything!

EDIT: Actually, as a test, I'm downloading VS 2015 directly from Microsoft, and I'll install it on this computer (which is obviously online) just to make sure that the program itself works and installs correctly, so that I'll know it will when I do it on the other computer.

Yeah it's "good ol vlad".....dearest of all my friends. ;)

That's why at one point I made backups of OS cds and also my serials...just in case. :)

(I remember fervently searching long ago for a Win 95 key on the OS manual hidden in a bunch of old boxes in storage......"fun" times)

Make sure to take the other pc OFFLINE when installing to test it properly. :)

I'm pretty sure I know where it is, in a closet, but I thought it was in a different room, and that just turned out to be Vista.

If by the other PC you mean the one onto which I'll install to test, that's this one (the one I'm using now), but I can't take it offline, because the whole point is that the installer only works when the computer's online, which is why I couldn't get it to work with the other one (the one that I ultimately want to install it onto), which is why I want to reformat it - so that I can securely put it online during the installation.

But I just wanted to test it on an already online computer so that I can verify that it works before I reformat the other one. Unfortunately, I tested it on this computer and it said that the installer isn't compatible with Windows Vista - even Visual Studio 2015! Can you believe it?

Oh well, I might be able to try it on another computer, but I was really hoping to be able to verify it before I reformat the other one.

Oh well.....also poor, poor vista.

"Just vista, he says"....*rolleyes* ;)

MS likes to dump backwards compatibility every so often to force people into new OSs and try to coerce people to not use some older software(among other reasons)....sh*t sucks, tbh.

Well GL to you, no matter what you do. :)