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Man To Live In House for One Year
Barry K. Nathan writes "MSNBC is reporting that a geek is actually locking himself into a rented house for a year, to prove that e-commerce makes it possible. He's even changed his legal name to DotComGuy. He says, 'I'm going to come out being a loon,' but I think you have to be crazy already to even think of doing this in the first place... " Actually, it does appear that he can go in the backyard - and can have visitors. But still, I think I'd lose it after about two weeks or so.
I'm usually not the kind of person to suggest this, but this is getting way out of hand:
:0 ).
Who can obtain his IP address? As soon as we get it, we'll pingflood/teardrop/whatever him to kingdom come... No food, no online shopping, nothing to do (Unless he's got enough books
As long as that doesn't happen, he's just getting way too much money.
This angers me so much - I am so sick of hearing about this guy on the nightly news, in the newspaper - it's SO much worse when you live in Dallas, because so many of his sponsors are local, including fucking A.H. Belo corp who runs half the media in this city, so they're all covering it like it's interesting. What's even passingly interesting is the amount of money the sponsors are pumping into this. Otherwise, it's basically a year-long talk show featuring a dork.
It's not an advance in web-cam intrusiveness - we have 24-7 webcams all over the place.
It's not an advance in "using technology to avoid leaving the house" - my parents have just about managed it, themselves. Thousands of people have lived most of their lives that way without the benefit of professional caretakers. Even 50 years ago, with enough money, you could buy every single thing you wanted with just the phone. Augh.
This is an advance in hype. Nothing more.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
Big deal. It's been done.
This is just an extended version of the crap experiment we see made by journalists all too often.
/without/ the internet and have him journal the experience, I'm sure enough /.'s would love that one =]
If he suceeds, so what? Can we make use of his knowledge in our future space exploration? Would we have not lost the Mars probes if one click shopping was more common?
If he fails, does that herald the end of the internet? The automobile didn't spell the end of walking, why should the internet spell the end of going anywhere?
Nothing of value can possibly come from this as far as I can see. This is just another publicity stunt to make money for whatever parties are involved.
Something more worthwhile would be starting a business with every employee from a different city around the country or globe, and have them do all their comunication through the internet (no phone calls, no fax, no paper just email/messaging and file attatchments).
Or another idea: Send Katz to Alaska for a year to live
NightHawk
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No Zen is good zen