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Ellen Feiss Interview

Posted by michael on from the did-you-know-that-there-are-mugs-with-your-face-on-them dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Wait is over! Ellen Feiss's interview is up! And she really was on drugs, (well, allergy meds.)" She's, like, going to be traumatized about this forever, like.

20 of 783 comments (clear)

  1. Enlightenment, anyone? by Max+Romantschuk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Since the server seems to be slashdotted there's not much chance of me educating myself on who she is...

    Anyone care to enlighten me?

    --
    .: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
  2. I'm a little disappointed... by Karl+Cocknozzle · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...That they weren't real switchers.

    I am also amused that they were able to pick people at random from their friends, and say "Tell us a windows PC horror story" and then that somehow equalled a series of TV commercials...

    What does that tell you?

    --
    Who did what now?
  3. In the long term by Hulver · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I really think that this is going to be bad for Linux as a whole.

    Everybody now is talking about Apple. Sure, It's pretty cool that Macs run Unix, but well, it's not Linux is it?

    Geeks are now starting to get Macs, instead of developing for Linux they're playing with all the cool stuff on their mac.

    Even Taco has got one! What next, will Linus get one? Will he decide that getting stuff done on his mac is more important than trying to get the next kernel out the door?

    Bah. Mac running unix might sound like a good thing, but all we're going to end up with is Apple as the new M$ instead.

    I just think it's a really bad thing for the whole Linux community.

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    -- Hulver's site
    1. Re:In the long term by pigeon · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I have to agree. I run Linux on all my servers, and love it, but OS X on the desktop really rocks.. I haven't had so much fun with my machine (A dual G4 powermac) since my Amiga 1000. It's also quite depressing when I have to work on a windows machine again, but I am very enthousiastic about OS X, it's easy, but if you want to do more complex stuff, that is also very well possible.

    2. Re:In the long term by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Everybody now is talking about Apple. Sure, It's pretty cool that Macs run Unix, but well, it's not Linux is it?

      Geeks are now starting to get Macs, instead of developing for Linux they're playing with all the cool stuff on their mac.

      I know it might seem like that from reading Slashdot, buy my experiences in the Real World don't bear it out.

      Back home, my best mate was a massive Mac advocate. When I went round to his house, he'd always show me a Mac advert. He loved the Switch campaign of course. He was always telling people, even strangers, how great Apple hardware was. I used his Mac quite a bit, all my circle of friends used it at least once, many more times for me. Out of my friends who were geeks (about 4 or 5 of us :) they have all installed Linux at some point. Did they all stick with it? No. Andrew tried a live CD but his disk was all NTFS so he was a bit stuck. Ken set it up as a small server to allow net connection sharing (he's now using it also at university). Hugh used it because his brother used it. Even Paul, the huge Mac advocate, has installed it 3 times (he got pissed off at the poor PPC support each time though ;).

      Then I moved away from home, I got a job at a research company. It used to be Ministry of Defence research before it was privatised. Inside the department, Linux is slowly taking over. There are about 25 of us who joined together, they are my new friends now. I use Linux on the desktop all the time, several others use it part time (rebooting for games and such). Now Dave is getting interested, he was enthusing to me today about Knoppix (he didn't want to disturb his current setup). The company I work in is full of geeks, some of them not badly off at all.

      How many Macs have I seen since I left Paul behind? None. Zilch. Zero. How many Linux boxes? Loads.

      It's easy to forget that it appears that MacOS is losing market share, and by Apples own admission a few months ago, Linux has nearly double the desktop market share of OS X. Hard to believe isn't it, but outside of Slashdot, there are millions of people with PCs, who don't like Windows and want to try something different. It's easy to try Linux, it costs nothing, and isn't a huge decision. Install it in an evening, try it, if you don't like it, remove it and go back to Windows. Try again in a year or two.

      That last sentance is the crucial one, I've seen lots of people try Linux and go back to Windows. But they always try again. And again. I tried Linux 3 times before dropping Windows.

      Bah. Mac running unix might sound like a good thing, but all we're going to end up with is Apple as the new M$ instead. I just think it's a really bad thing for the whole Linux community.

      Don't worry :) It's alright, Linux is chugging along just nicely. The Mac isn't, and never was, a realistic proposition for most people. That's why it has 4% of the market (far less if you only count os x machines), when it originally had more like 40%. In much the same way that the PC won out over the Mac in the early/mid 90s because the PC was economically if not technically superior (competition drove down margins, powered massive speed increases and so on), Linux gains from the same effect. The presence of competition is usually beneficial to a market as a whole.

      For the small number of geeks that decide to stop kernel hacking in favour of writing a new Cocoa IRC client or whatever, they will be replaced 2 times over by newcomers and business. There aren't any flash adverts about it, but the statistics stand.

  4. elen feiss's popularity by pamri · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It seems others are noticing elen feiss's popularity with the geek crowd.

  5. Lies! Damned lies!! by seanmeister · · Score: 3, Interesting

    According to Ellen in the interview:

    It's kind of a funny story. I'm friends with the son of the director, Errol Morris. I'm friends with his son Hamilton. I went with him after school, him and two of my friends. We didn't think we were going to make ads; we were just going to get the free set food. So we go there, and they're like, "We need a couple more people, so I guess the three of you can make ads." So we all made ads, and me and Hamilton's got picked. I had no idea I was going to do it until I got there.

    According to Ellen at Apple's site:

    I'm writing to share a tragic little story.

    My Dad has a PC that my sister and I used to use for our homework assignments. One night, I was writing a paper on it, when all of a sudden it went berserk, the screen started flashing, and the whole paper just disappeared. All of it. And it was a good paper! I had to cram and rewrite it really quickly. Needless to say, my rushed paper wasn't nearly as good, and I blame that PC for the grade I got.

    I'm happy to report that my sister and I now share an Apple PowerBook. It's a lot nicer to work on than my dad's PC was, it hasn't let me down once, and my grades have all been really good.

    Thanks, Apple.

    Ellen Feiss

    So which was it - an email to Apple, or a hookup with the director's son?

    1. Re:Lies! Damned lies!! by banzai51 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What makes me laugh about her story (besides her, of course) is the opposite could be true of every student of the University of Michigan in the early to mid nineties. U of M had all of it's non-engineering computer rooms stocked with Macs. The Macs were notorious for crashing. The wail or sobs of some unlucky bastard that just lost a 10 page paper were pretty gruesome and common. That experience made me swear off Macs.

  6. She Seems OK... by mcflaherty · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I mean, she seems to take this rather well. Were I a 15 year old girl who just wandered onto a set and told a story, and then discovered that there were thousands of rabid slashdotters drooling over me, Natalie Portman, and hot grits... Well maybe that Benadryll might start to come in handy.

    I hope she gets an acting career. When everyone forgets this is where she started, it will be fun to burst the bubble of some fan boy. (Sort of like Alanis Morissette and "You Can't Do That On Television")

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    -- I am become sig, destroyer of posts.
  7. If you're wondering why.... by onomatomania · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you're wondering why the Brown Daily Herald (student paper of Brown Univ.) got the scoop on the first Feiss interview, the reason is that someone on its staff was apparently an ex-classmate of hers. She has avoided the media, by her own choice and at Apple's request (they are trying to downplay the pot thing) but she figured that a college newspaper would be sufficiently "under the radar."

    (see also the Wired Article...)

  8. Re:"Bendadryl" my butt by NFNNMIDATA · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Folks who disagree with the parent, watch the ad. It's hard to tell if it's for apple or if it's an anti-drug ad or even if it's a Conan O'Brien-style parody. You keep waiting for her to say she microwaved the baby. She's obviously stoned, question is can you really get that stoned on Benadryl? Consider also that she admits she was only there for the free food in the first place (*cough* munchies *cough*)...

  9. Re:Because... by hype7 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    don't get me started!
    2002-11-22 10:31:22 First ever Ellen Feiss interview (articles,humor) (rejected)
  10. In all fairness to the switch ads by f00zbll · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Lately I've been considering switching, but not really because of the ads. More than anything it's the assinine licensing of XP. I recently went through two months of BS dealing with microsoft and their jacked up licensing bs. I'm a heavy computer user and re-install windows at minimum twice a year. This is a format c: drive and completely reinstall clean. Now if I only had 1 computer that would be ok, but I have several as in 5 computers. That means at minimum I re-install windows clean 7 times a year.

    Sure win2K and XP are more stable, but after tons of install/uninstalls of apps and programs the thing starts to seriously slow down and munge itself. Since 95 I've had windows corrupt it's own dll's atleast 2x a year on all the systems. This isn't even counting production boxes at work that have mysteriously killed IIS dll's.

    The thought of having to tech support my Son's computer is beginning to make me throw up. He already has a skill for crashing win2K and XP by pressing down on a half dozen keys for a minute. Toddlers and young children don't know that microsoft didn't design the keyboard as a ladder or piano. All they know is when I push down on all the keys with my palm, the box makes lots of funny noises. I've seen young children bang on mac keyboards without causing it to lock up hard. Sure the ads are stupid, but many people consider themselves computer challenged. If buying a mac means I don't have to re-install windows on my Son's box 5x times a year, I'm there. I rather not waste 4 hours per install, when I could be doing other things more fun.

  11. Slashot Interview Anyone? by bje2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Can we please get a slashdot interview with her, so we can ask some questions????

    --

    "Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
  12. Cute? by Beli · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Personally I think Momoko Kokikuchi is much cuter!

    1. Re:Cute? by KH · · Score: 2, Interesting

      She says her name is ``Kikuchi Momoko,'' and some other links at Apple says so, too. Funny thing is that there was an aidoru called ``Kikuchi Momoko'' in the '80s. And it looks like her name is exactly the same as the celebrity, even up to the Kanji characters. (I saw it at apple.co.jp)

      I don't like her ad because she looks like acting. And the story is a bad attempt of mimicking Ellen story. The Japanese don't talk that way.

  13. Re:Is that it? by DevNova · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here are the pictures taken at the Holland party where everyone dressed up as Ellen. Some people are very scary!

  14. Re:shes only 15?? by zapfie · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How are troll and offtopic mods an abuse of the system?

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    slashdot!=valid HTML
  15. Re:Is that it? by FireBreathingDog · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Don't forget that a HUGE chunk of the economic activity generated WITHIN cities are the result of suburbanites commuting to them, and working and shopping in them. The tax revenue generated within cities by non-city residents is a large part of the reason why cities are "net payers into the tax pool".

    So, to imply that CITIES==LIBERALS==PROVIDE TAX MONEY whereas EXURBAN==CONSERVATIVES==TAKE TAX MONEY is a completely bogus argument.

    Besides, cities have MUCH higher tax rates anyway. Is this something we all aspire to?

    FYI...I live in NYC, the municipality with the highest total tax burden in the U.S. I pay a sh!tload in taxes. Don't assume that just because much of NYC is liberal doesn't mean that all of its residents are liberal when it comes to tax policy. There are some of us out there who aren't.

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    Shame on Google.
  16. Re:I mourn... by mumkin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...for the quality of education in American schools

    I don't know, really. If you ignore the proliferation of likes, she seemed otherwise well-spoken. And she used the word "bombard" in a sentence, which absolutely floored me. If anything, her Q rating has gone up in my book :-)