Firstly, I think what you do is reprehensible. You aren't going to change my mind on that. Hopefully I can convince others that your entire industry is a collosal waste of time and effort. I know that you think you are a good person who contributes to society, and that all your family and friends tell you the same thing. In fact, our society venerates people such as yourself who make a lot of money. So on the one hand, we have your opinion of yourself which is backed up by family, friends, and society, and on the other hand we have me telling you that what you do is reprehensible. One of the perks of buying into the game and playing it well is that you never have to question your assumptions. So go on feeling like you have contributed something of value to society, there is no real pressure to feel otherwise. But that doesn't make your feelings true and in the end, history will look back on your kind as the leeches you are.
As an advertising executive, would you say that an ad that does not in some way eventually drive up sales is a good ad or a bad ad? I will dare tell you it is a bad ad, and I will further dare tell you that you will look like a very stupid ad executive if you contradict me. Your choice of life path has so divorced you from your own sense of logic that you can question my statement about what makes a good ad, and then in the very next sentence basically restate what I had originally said. Ads entertain in order to sell products. An ad that entertains but never "builds brand equity which in turn can lead to a purchase further down the line or a mention to a friend who might purchase, etc." is a failure and I don't have to be an ad industry executive to know that. I'm actually hoping you try to dispute that, it will be very amusing to watch a leech twist itself into a pretzel.
As for the military, you don't seem to understand the concept of opportunity cost. Sure, we got something out of our military investment. But, for example, if I told you I invested $100 and five years later I had made a total of $1 in profit, would you say that was a good investment or a bad investment? Bad? But I profited, how can that be bad? Because, if I had invested that money in almost anything else I would have made more. Similarly, if we had invested all the money spent on the military on other things, we would have profited more.
You would blame the viewer of your ads for doing the very thing you set out to convince them to do, wouldn't you? How convenient. Profit off of others weaknesses and then blame them for being weak. This perfectly illustrates the utter lack of morals in your industry. As it is, we have record levels of consumer debt in this country, and yet all scientific studies of happiness levels show that we are no happier than people in many poor countries where people have nothing except strong community, a large network of friends, and a feeling of belonging and self worth. Do we need to go into debt to be happy? Obviously not, others all over the world do it.
I have volunteered at a homeless shelter and I have met a family that tried to keep up with the Joneses because of what advertisers told them they had to do in order to be worthwile humans. They went bankrupt and had to live in a shelter. Were they stupid? Yes. But the people who profited off of their stupidity are worse, they are evil. Good people try to help people like that. Bad people try to make money off of them.
Because you have had to turn off major patrs of your brain in order to live with yourself and your choices, you can not see the ridiculousness of your own statements: "viral marketing was termed viral because of how it spreads organically by people passing the word along to their friends. Not because it "hacks peoples brains"." Wow. How does it spread organically? What does it do to people in order to get them to "pass the word on to their friends?" What else spreads organically by getting people to pass it on to their friends? If you try to wake up from your self induced coma and think before you writ
Let's look at the evidence. Listerine invented haslitosis. DeBeers invented the engagement ring. Hallmark invented Valentines day. Did anyone really worry about dandruff before Head & Shoulders started telling everyone they are undesireable if they have flakes? Advertisers and marketers create artificial demand for a product rather than just pointing people who already want a product towards a supplier. Do you dispute that?
As I said, advertisers exploit security holes in our mental operating systems. When people write computer viruses, we may blame Microsoft for making an insecure OS, but we also blame the people who exploit the situation.
In a free market, in every exchange both parties feel as though they have made a profit. But how is that profit split? Does most of it go to one side or the other? Advertisers and marketers try to create an artificial sense of value in a product, so people will spend more on it and still feel as if they were profiting. Advertisers do this by exploiting insecurites. They don't actually have to call people lazy and fat, that wouldn't be effective. Rather, they simply show people who are happy and succesful using a particular product.
You don't have to explicitly state that, if you use this product you will get lots of sex, or if you don't, you won't. People already feel they aren't getting something they need, advertising doesn't have to convince them of that. It just has to show people who are getting what they need, and create a mental connection to a product in the process. This makes people who aren't getting what they need feel that if they buy the product, they will get what they need. So they don't buy, say, a car because they need transportation, they buy a car because they want to feel desireable.
Desireability is the product they are buying, but feeling desireabile is something everyone could have for free. Making someone feel desireable costs nothing. Advertisers have a vested interest in making sure people do not feel desireable, happy, powerful, like they belong, or like they are useful and important parts of society. That is what they are selling, not actual tangible products, and if everyone felt those things, advertisers would be out of a job.
You want people to be smarter, but advertising actually makes people dumber. And making people smarter would end advertising. So we really want the same thing, smart self confident people and an end to advertising.
Finally, gertting back to a point you made earlier: there is a point in making people want what they have and not want what they don't have: it costs nothing and increases human satisfaction and happiness. Satisfied and happy people make better neighbors. There may not be a monetary profit to be made, but not all that is good can be measured in dollars.
The real problem I have with advertising is that there is so much real human suffering in the world. Advertising is a waste of effort. If everyone in advertising world wide worked instead on feeding and housing people, human suffering would be greatly reduced. Instead, advertisers create MORE suffering by exploiting people's weaknesses.
Most products in existence are surrogates for some real human need like belonging or love that could be fulfilled through real human contact. In fact, the products themselves only temporarily dull the pain that comes from not having real human contact. This situation is ideal for people who make and sell these products, as the products do not actually solve the problem and so people keep coming back for more. Therefore, this entire sector of our economy is a waste of human effort. People making and selling products that do not actually relieve any human suffering are wasting their lives and the lives of others.
If everyone were fed, clothed, housed, and had access to basic medicine, I would have no problem with anyone doing any stupid or selfish thing. I would never force anyone to try to rectify this problem, but I will always call them out on it and attempt to shame them for being selfish. People do not get to be around me, act selfishly, and still get to think of themselves as great people, at least not without a fight from me.
If you can't tell a deliberate hyperbole from the use of the word "seriously," then you certainly shouldn't be in industry that makes use of such tropes. If the masses actually NEEDED products, they would find them. But advertising isn't about helping people find products they need, it is about making people want products they don't have.
The military-industrial complex is also a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Yet it adds nothing of value to human life. In fact it does just the opposite, taking all value from human lives by taking those lives. If there were no armies anywhere, there would be no need for armies. The child labor industry makes billions, too. Just because something is popular or highly valued does not mean it is useful in relieving human suffering.
Providing entertainment is NOT what good advertising is about. An ad that was entertaining but sold no products would be a miserable failure. Making people do things they otherwise wouldn't is what advertising is about. Marketers and advertisers create demand for products that, in a sane world, would fail. If advertising didn't work like black magic mind control, it wouldn't be a multi billion dollar a year industry.
Advertisers are like virus writers for the mind. The phrase 'viral marketing' is a dead giveaway. If you are an advertiser, you are a virus writer. You are scum who takes advantage of bugs in people's mental operating system.
I know very little about organized crime, either, but I know enough to know that I want no part of it and I wish it were gone. The thing about sweeping generalizations is, sometimes they are true.
You would have to have responded to me before this post in order to claim you had "backed me into a corner." That's just ludicrous. I can tell that you must have a great deal of cognitive dissonance going on in order to make a comment that nonsensical. Assumiung from your spirited but craftless defense of an indefensible industry, I'm guessing you are in advertising. The truth about what you do is fighting your fantasy inside your head, and it makes it hard to think. That is my only explanation as to why you would claim to have backed me into a corner when this was your first response to me.
Seriously, if you are in advertising your entire life is a waste. You have contributed nothing of value to humanity. You have fucked with people's heads for profit. You have studied human psychology not to heal minds, but to destroy them. You are scum and you need to either change or die. You need to learn that my response is not in fact over the top, but entirely appropriate given what you are and what you do.
You know, I say the same thing about my industry, the baby torturing industry. Sure, there may be some evil people in the baby torturing industry but most of us are decent hard working Americans just like you.
Seriously, advertising as an industry has no redeeming qualities. It consumes resources and produces nothing of value. It convinces people to do or buy things they wouldn't have if they thought about it rationally, and it does this through deceit and making people feel insecure. It's not quite as bad as baby torturing, but it certainly isn't something any decent, moral human being would ever want to do.
Let me guess, you're in advertising? If so, why don't you take some advice from comedian Bill Hicks?
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously.
No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke"... there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web! "Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..." How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?"
And to that let me add: anyone in the business of mind control, I hope you get some horrible disease and die a painful death. As Bill said, there is no excuse for what you do.
Here's a good trick with strike anywhere matches. Cut a small (1/8") slit in the wooden end. Put two small strips of paper into the slit and bend them out to make four fins. Throw the match at any hard surface and it will ignite.
Don't you mods watch the Simpsons? I mean, sure, the Screamapiller episode wandered all over the place, and the ending was especially dumb, but the first part, that actually had the Screamapiller, was hilarious.
And over the course of 16 million years, during which time period most modern mammals evolved from mouse-like creatures, why did the ones in New Zealand not evolve into many various forms that would have competed with birds? I mean, if no mammals are there, it makes sense why no mammals would have evolved to compete with birds, but if even one is there for 16 million years, why did it not evolve into a plethora of new forms?
Mice also never eat any kind of insects or seeds that birds eat. In fact, mice and birds have never and will never compete for resources. Long live the mighty mouse/bird alliance!
But obviously its a good deal for those that take it, otherwise they wouldn't.
So if I held a gun to your head and gave you the choice of being shot or anally raped by a dingo and you chose being anally raped by a dingo you'd say that was a good deal for you, otherwise you wouldn't take it?
And by a region becoming poor again, I mean vast quantitites of international capital leaving, not people squandering the wealth they've made. I mean factories leaving, like they have here in America. Did "we" squander our wealth, is that why they left?
As long as money, products, and information are free to traverse national borders but people aren't, tehn as soon as one region wises up and starts demanding what they are worth, the megacorps will simply move on to the next desperate region. They will let the uppity region become poor again before moving back in.
First: there is no reason that your servers could notn cache the software. Second, the security risk is no higher than with traditional software. Reputable companies will sign contracts stating they won't use your data. Nothing is stopping any software company from sending your personal data to their server, except they would have their asses handed to them in a court of law if anyone sued them. Third, what with support contracts and upgrades, people are in effect renting software now. Most people don't care or even really understand the difference between owning intellectual "property" and renting or licensing it. Finally, there were insurmountable bandwidth issues that kept this from working in the past.
Personally, I would never rent software I used at home. But then, I would never lease a car either. I hear many people, and especially corporations, do lease cars if it makes financial sense for them. I imagine leased software would make sense in some situations, too. Think about it: you have a little startup and you want a nice integrated CRM, HR and accounting package. You can shell out $100,000 upfront for the package with the functionality you want and still pay $1,000/month in support, or you can lease the package, support included, for $2,000 per month. Which would you pick?
Will leased software ever completely replace owned software, as this Sun wingnut predicts? In his greedy wet dreams, maybe. But it will become a larger part of the total software landscape than it is now.
Cell phones cause inattentive drivers. It has been shown that having a conversation on even a hands free cell phone impairs reaction times far more than having a conversation with someone in the car.
Are you claiming that driving while using a cell phone is safe? Are you saying that people can pay attention to driving while using a cell phone? Do you like to drive while using a cell phone, perhaps?
People misunderstand Occam. He doesn't say that the simplest explanation is the most likely. He says that, given a number of possibilities and no other way to distinguish the most likely, the simplest is the most likely. People forget that important caveat all the time. Occam's razor isn't universal, it is a rule of thumb of last resort, for making educated guesses when you don't have enough information. Occam's razor can't logically validate anything, because it can never make any certain predictions, only guesses.
That being said, it is useful when people come at you with what you suspect may be crackpottery. Just ask yourself, "How many things would have to be true for this to be true?" The more conditions a theory depends on, the more chances for it to be wrong. If someone tells you a theory that would require you to change many of your assumptions about reality, Occam's razor doesn't say that theory is wrong, it just says that you should require a greater amount of evidence before accepting it.
This is why crackpots hate Occam, it gives people a filter that helps keep the crackpots from wasting their time.
You don't get a good credit score by not being in debt. You get a good credit score by managing debt well. The credit agencies like to see people who rack up large amounts of debt and then slowely pay it all off without missing a payment. If you do everything on a cash basis, you will have a crap credit score.
So the solution is to throw up one's hands and say, "Feh. What can you do?" is it? Maybe when someone does something unfair we should instead say, "Hey, that's not fair!" in a very public manner. Using the assumed unfairness of life in order to excuse the unfairness of a particualar action smacks of circular reasoning.
Most people who use the phrase "Life's not fair" should also, for the sake of honesty, add the caveat "and not only don't I want to do anything about it, I don't want you to do anything about it, because then I would have to confront the fact that I am a lazy bastard who would rather be kicked around by life while maintaining the illusion of cynical detachement than actually take a stand against unfairness."
I loved chemnistry, dolt. Obviously you have never worked with glass. Try researching the things you write about before responding. I just went to google and typed in "glass etching cream." It took all of five seconds. If you had bothered to do that you would know that there is an actual product called "glass etching cream" and then you wouldn't look like an idiot.
One thing about most acids is this: they are not generally viscous. Two things about creams: they are viscous, and they can be acidic. When etching glass, you don't submerge the glass in an acid bath. That would take a lot of acid for any decent sized piece of glass. No, after putting on the resist, you smear on some cream, wait a while, then wipe it off.
The funniest part of your reply is your obvious assumption that because I used the word "cream" I must be a girl. Hilarious.
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Firstly, I think what you do is reprehensible. You aren't going to change my mind on that. Hopefully I can convince others that your entire industry is a collosal waste of time and effort. I know that you think you are a good person who contributes to society, and that all your family and friends tell you the same thing. In fact, our society venerates people such as yourself who make a lot of money. So on the one hand, we have your opinion of yourself which is backed up by family, friends, and society, and on the other hand we have me telling you that what you do is reprehensible. One of the perks of buying into the game and playing it well is that you never have to question your assumptions. So go on feeling like you have contributed something of value to society, there is no real pressure to feel otherwise. But that doesn't make your feelings true and in the end, history will look back on your kind as the leeches you are.
As an advertising executive, would you say that an ad that does not in some way eventually drive up sales is a good ad or a bad ad? I will dare tell you it is a bad ad, and I will further dare tell you that you will look like a very stupid ad executive if you contradict me. Your choice of life path has so divorced you from your own sense of logic that you can question my statement about what makes a good ad, and then in the very next sentence basically restate what I had originally said. Ads entertain in order to sell products. An ad that entertains but never "builds brand equity which in turn can lead to a purchase further down the line or a mention to a friend who might purchase, etc." is a failure and I don't have to be an ad industry executive to know that. I'm actually hoping you try to dispute that, it will be very amusing to watch a leech twist itself into a pretzel.
As for the military, you don't seem to understand the concept of opportunity cost. Sure, we got something out of our military investment. But, for example, if I told you I invested $100 and five years later I had made a total of $1 in profit, would you say that was a good investment or a bad investment? Bad? But I profited, how can that be bad? Because, if I had invested that money in almost anything else I would have made more. Similarly, if we had invested all the money spent on the military on other things, we would have profited more.
You would blame the viewer of your ads for doing the very thing you set out to convince them to do, wouldn't you? How convenient. Profit off of others weaknesses and then blame them for being weak. This perfectly illustrates the utter lack of morals in your industry. As it is, we have record levels of consumer debt in this country, and yet all scientific studies of happiness levels show that we are no happier than people in many poor countries where people have nothing except strong community, a large network of friends, and a feeling of belonging and self worth. Do we need to go into debt to be happy? Obviously not, others all over the world do it.
I have volunteered at a homeless shelter and I have met a family that tried to keep up with the Joneses because of what advertisers told them they had to do in order to be worthwile humans. They went bankrupt and had to live in a shelter. Were they stupid? Yes. But the people who profited off of their stupidity are worse, they are evil. Good people try to help people like that. Bad people try to make money off of them.
Because you have had to turn off major patrs of your brain in order to live with yourself and your choices, you can not see the ridiculousness of your own statements: "viral marketing was termed viral because of how it spreads organically by people passing the word along to their friends. Not because it "hacks peoples brains"." Wow. How does it spread organically? What does it do to people in order to get them to "pass the word on to their friends?" What else spreads organically by getting people to pass it on to their friends? If you try to wake up from your self induced coma and think before you writ
Let's look at the evidence. Listerine invented haslitosis. DeBeers invented the engagement ring. Hallmark invented Valentines day. Did anyone really worry about dandruff before Head & Shoulders started telling everyone they are undesireable if they have flakes? Advertisers and marketers create artificial demand for a product rather than just pointing people who already want a product towards a supplier. Do you dispute that?
As I said, advertisers exploit security holes in our mental operating systems. When people write computer viruses, we may blame Microsoft for making an insecure OS, but we also blame the people who exploit the situation.
In a free market, in every exchange both parties feel as though they have made a profit. But how is that profit split? Does most of it go to one side or the other? Advertisers and marketers try to create an artificial sense of value in a product, so people will spend more on it and still feel as if they were profiting. Advertisers do this by exploiting insecurites. They don't actually have to call people lazy and fat, that wouldn't be effective. Rather, they simply show people who are happy and succesful using a particular product.
You don't have to explicitly state that, if you use this product you will get lots of sex, or if you don't, you won't. People already feel they aren't getting something they need, advertising doesn't have to convince them of that. It just has to show people who are getting what they need, and create a mental connection to a product in the process. This makes people who aren't getting what they need feel that if they buy the product, they will get what they need. So they don't buy, say, a car because they need transportation, they buy a car because they want to feel desireable.
Desireability is the product they are buying, but feeling desireabile is something everyone could have for free. Making someone feel desireable costs nothing. Advertisers have a vested interest in making sure people do not feel desireable, happy, powerful, like they belong, or like they are useful and important parts of society. That is what they are selling, not actual tangible products, and if everyone felt those things, advertisers would be out of a job.
You want people to be smarter, but advertising actually makes people dumber. And making people smarter would end advertising. So we really want the same thing, smart self confident people and an end to advertising.
Finally, gertting back to a point you made earlier: there is a point in making people want what they have and not want what they don't have: it costs nothing and increases human satisfaction and happiness. Satisfied and happy people make better neighbors. There may not be a monetary profit to be made, but not all that is good can be measured in dollars.
The real problem I have with advertising is that there is so much real human suffering in the world. Advertising is a waste of effort. If everyone in advertising world wide worked instead on feeding and housing people, human suffering would be greatly reduced. Instead, advertisers create MORE suffering by exploiting people's weaknesses.
Most products in existence are surrogates for some real human need like belonging or love that could be fulfilled through real human contact. In fact, the products themselves only temporarily dull the pain that comes from not having real human contact. This situation is ideal for people who make and sell these products, as the products do not actually solve the problem and so people keep coming back for more. Therefore, this entire sector of our economy is a waste of human effort. People making and selling products that do not actually relieve any human suffering are wasting their lives and the lives of others.
If everyone were fed, clothed, housed, and had access to basic medicine, I would have no problem with anyone doing any stupid or selfish thing. I would never force anyone to try to rectify this problem, but I will always call them out on it and attempt to shame them for being selfish. People do not get to be around me, act selfishly, and still get to think of themselves as great people, at least not without a fight from me.
If you can't tell a deliberate hyperbole from the use of the word "seriously," then you certainly shouldn't be in industry that makes use of such tropes. If the masses actually NEEDED products, they would find them. But advertising isn't about helping people find products they need, it is about making people want products they don't have.
The military-industrial complex is also a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Yet it adds nothing of value to human life. In fact it does just the opposite, taking all value from human lives by taking those lives. If there were no armies anywhere, there would be no need for armies. The child labor industry makes billions, too. Just because something is popular or highly valued does not mean it is useful in relieving human suffering.
Providing entertainment is NOT what good advertising is about. An ad that was entertaining but sold no products would be a miserable failure. Making people do things they otherwise wouldn't is what advertising is about. Marketers and advertisers create demand for products that, in a sane world, would fail. If advertising didn't work like black magic mind control, it wouldn't be a multi billion dollar a year industry.
Advertisers are like virus writers for the mind. The phrase 'viral marketing' is a dead giveaway. If you are an advertiser, you are a virus writer. You are scum who takes advantage of bugs in people's mental operating system.
I know very little about organized crime, either, but I know enough to know that I want no part of it and I wish it were gone. The thing about sweeping generalizations is, sometimes they are true.
You would have to have responded to me before this post in order to claim you had "backed me into a corner." That's just ludicrous. I can tell that you must have a great deal of cognitive dissonance going on in order to make a comment that nonsensical. Assumiung from your spirited but craftless defense of an indefensible industry, I'm guessing you are in advertising. The truth about what you do is fighting your fantasy inside your head, and it makes it hard to think. That is my only explanation as to why you would claim to have backed me into a corner when this was your first response to me.
Seriously, if you are in advertising your entire life is a waste. You have contributed nothing of value to humanity. You have fucked with people's heads for profit. You have studied human psychology not to heal minds, but to destroy them. You are scum and you need to either change or die. You need to learn that my response is not in fact over the top, but entirely appropriate given what you are and what you do.
Seriously, advertising as an industry has no redeeming qualities. It consumes resources and produces nothing of value. It convinces people to do or buy things they wouldn't have if they thought about it rationally, and it does this through deceit and making people feel insecure. It's not quite as bad as baby torturing, but it certainly isn't something any decent, moral human being would ever want to do.
Let me guess, you're in advertising? If so, why don't you take some advice from comedian Bill Hicks?
And to that let me add: anyone in the business of mind control, I hope you get some horrible disease and die a painful death. As Bill said, there is no excuse for what you do.
Here's a good trick with strike anywhere matches. Cut a small (1/8") slit in the wooden end. Put two small strips of paper into the slit and bend them out to make four fins. Throw the match at any hard surface and it will ignite.
Don't you mods watch the Simpsons? I mean, sure, the Screamapiller episode wandered all over the place, and the ending was especially dumb, but the first part, that actually had the Screamapiller, was hilarious.
And over the course of 16 million years, during which time period most modern mammals evolved from mouse-like creatures, why did the ones in New Zealand not evolve into many various forms that would have competed with birds? I mean, if no mammals are there, it makes sense why no mammals would have evolved to compete with birds, but if even one is there for 16 million years, why did it not evolve into a plethora of new forms?
Mice also never eat any kind of insects or seeds that birds eat. In fact, mice and birds have never and will never compete for resources. Long live the mighty mouse/bird alliance!
But obviously its a good deal for those that take it, otherwise they wouldn't.
So if I held a gun to your head and gave you the choice of being shot or anally raped by a dingo and you chose being anally raped by a dingo you'd say that was a good deal for you, otherwise you wouldn't take it?
And by a region becoming poor again, I mean vast quantitites of international capital leaving, not people squandering the wealth they've made. I mean factories leaving, like they have here in America. Did "we" squander our wealth, is that why they left?
As long as money, products, and information are free to traverse national borders but people aren't, tehn as soon as one region wises up and starts demanding what they are worth, the megacorps will simply move on to the next desperate region. They will let the uppity region become poor again before moving back in.
Oh yeah? Well I heard George Bush invested one Brazillian dollars.
It's a veritable tidal-wave of tsunami metaphors...
>>Merz says that while building a car today "is mainly software, until a certain point anyway,"
>Not a car I would ever drive... I prefer my cars with *no* software.
I wouldn't go that far, I just prefer a car with no windows.
You get to be relieved of the terrible burden of excess cash.
First: there is no reason that your servers could notn cache the software. Second, the security risk is no higher than with traditional software. Reputable companies will sign contracts stating they won't use your data. Nothing is stopping any software company from sending your personal data to their server, except they would have their asses handed to them in a court of law if anyone sued them. Third, what with support contracts and upgrades, people are in effect renting software now. Most people don't care or even really understand the difference between owning intellectual "property" and renting or licensing it. Finally, there were insurmountable bandwidth issues that kept this from working in the past.
Personally, I would never rent software I used at home. But then, I would never lease a car either. I hear many people, and especially corporations, do lease cars if it makes financial sense for them. I imagine leased software would make sense in some situations, too. Think about it: you have a little startup and you want a nice integrated CRM, HR and accounting package. You can shell out $100,000 upfront for the package with the functionality you want and still pay $1,000/month in support, or you can lease the package, support included, for $2,000 per month. Which would you pick?
Will leased software ever completely replace owned software, as this Sun wingnut predicts? In his greedy wet dreams, maybe. But it will become a larger part of the total software landscape than it is now.
Cell phones cause inattentive drivers. It has been shown that having a conversation on even a hands free cell phone impairs reaction times far more than having a conversation with someone in the car.
Are you claiming that driving while using a cell phone is safe? Are you saying that people can pay attention to driving while using a cell phone? Do you like to drive while using a cell phone, perhaps?
How about a software subscription service where you own the server and the data stays on your hard drive, but the software is on a network filesystem?
People misunderstand Occam. He doesn't say that the simplest explanation is the most likely. He says that, given a number of possibilities and no other way to distinguish the most likely, the simplest is the most likely. People forget that important caveat all the time. Occam's razor isn't universal, it is a rule of thumb of last resort, for making educated guesses when you don't have enough information. Occam's razor can't logically validate anything, because it can never make any certain predictions, only guesses.
That being said, it is useful when people come at you with what you suspect may be crackpottery. Just ask yourself, "How many things would have to be true for this to be true?" The more conditions a theory depends on, the more chances for it to be wrong. If someone tells you a theory that would require you to change many of your assumptions about reality, Occam's razor doesn't say that theory is wrong, it just says that you should require a greater amount of evidence before accepting it.
This is why crackpots hate Occam, it gives people a filter that helps keep the crackpots from wasting their time.
You don't get a good credit score by not being in debt. You get a good credit score by managing debt well. The credit agencies like to see people who rack up large amounts of debt and then slowely pay it all off without missing a payment. If you do everything on a cash basis, you will have a crap credit score.
To make a long story short is a phrase who's origins are complicated and boring...
When you swim ina da sea
And an Eel bites your knee,
That's a morey.
When our habits are strange
And our customs deranged
That's our mores.
A New Zealander man
with a permanent tan,
That's a Maori.
Thanks Spider, I'd never have known the difference without ya!
Don't talk about your wife on Slashclub.
Rule #2 of Slashclub:
Don't try to talk about Slashclub with your wife.
Do you also have to file a Weekly Estimated Net Usage or Annual Net Usage reports?
So the solution is to throw up one's hands and say, "Feh. What can you do?" is it? Maybe when someone does something unfair we should instead say, "Hey, that's not fair!" in a very public manner. Using the assumed unfairness of life in order to excuse the unfairness of a particualar action smacks of circular reasoning.
Most people who use the phrase "Life's not fair" should also, for the sake of honesty, add the caveat "and not only don't I want to do anything about it, I don't want you to do anything about it, because then I would have to confront the fact that I am a lazy bastard who would rather be kicked around by life while maintaining the illusion of cynical detachement than actually take a stand against unfairness."
I loved chemnistry, dolt. Obviously you have never worked with glass. Try researching the things you write about before responding. I just went to google and typed in "glass etching cream." It took all of five seconds. If you had bothered to do that you would know that there is an actual product called "glass etching cream" and then you wouldn't look like an idiot.
One thing about most acids is this: they are not generally viscous. Two things about creams: they are viscous, and they can be acidic. When etching glass, you don't submerge the glass in an acid bath. That would take a lot of acid for any decent sized piece of glass. No, after putting on the resist, you smear on some cream, wait a while, then wipe it off.
The funniest part of your reply is your obvious assumption that because I used the word "cream" I must be a girl. Hilarious.