I have posted a review on Amazon's web site. Perhaps you would like to know why I did it. My goal was not to help Amazon. My goal was to help fellow Amazon customers decide whether to buy that product from Amazon - or elsewhere. That it benefits Amazon, too, is irrelevant to me. I appreciate that their business model allowed me to post that review and to read the reviews of others.
I have benefitted from other's reviews. I have selected to buy products based on other's reviews and I have opted to not buy other products bases on product reviews. I therefore assumed that my review might be valuable to another Amazon customer.
This is more than just a "computer" problem. Consider the good old "washing machine".
There are "Regular", "Permanent Press" and "Delicate" cycles. There are "hot", "warm" and "cold" wash temperatures and similar options for _rinse_ temperatures. There are orifices for detergent, fabric softener, stain remover,...
All you want to do was wash your clothes.
Select the wrong settings and you might ruin your clothes. The questions have to be answered correctly.
We _want_ things to do our particular bidding. The reason that the options for doing so is frustrating is nothing more complicated than wishing that everybody else were just like us.
Referring to one specific example from the author: The Scrabble game plays music because many people _like_that_feature_. Some probably even threw away their previous version of their Scrabble game just so that they could have that feature. I guarantee that if most people did not like the feature it would not have made to commercial production. What the author dislikes is merely that there are so many other people with a taste in Scrabble different from his own that his own preference is in the minority.
One post below described a college radio station that changed to using a strict playlist, and that _gained_ listeners to such an extent that the local commercial radio station noticed and had to change their playlist.
This is a bad thing???
I, personally, have no interest in commercial radio, but I am not so fossilized that I do not remember my youth. Kids listen to what their friends listen to, and this is a good thing. It adds to what someone once called the "creative commons" of our culture. The station that caters to the lowest common denominator fulfills that role best. More power to them, I say.
Once one examines the question as to why anyone would ever listen to the radio at all, it becomes more clear that the radio's only power is in its ability to create a shared experience. Put a different way, suppose there were a radio station that by magic guarantee, broadcast only what *you* *personally* wanted to hear at that exact time - anyone else listening would quickly want to twist the dial - again by virtue of magic guarantee. My question to you would be: would you listen to such a station? Remember, there'd be _no_ possibility of meeting someone in the hallway or at the store who might have heard the broadcast. Would you be interested in listening to such a radio station? I submit not. I submit that to at least some degree, we listen to the radio (and watch the TV, too) with the expectation that we are not the only ones experiencing that broadcast.
Slashdot Mirror
I have posted a review on Amazon's web site. Perhaps you would like to know why I did it. My goal was not to help Amazon. My goal was to help fellow Amazon customers decide whether to buy that product from Amazon - or elsewhere. That it benefits Amazon, too, is irrelevant to me. I appreciate that their business model allowed me to post that review and to read the reviews of others.
I have benefitted from other's reviews. I have selected to buy products based on other's reviews and I have opted to not buy other products bases on product reviews. I therefore assumed that my review might be valuable to another Amazon customer.
This is more than just a "computer" problem. Consider the good old "washing machine".
...
There are "Regular", "Permanent Press" and "Delicate" cycles. There are "hot", "warm" and "cold" wash temperatures and similar options for _rinse_ temperatures. There are orifices for detergent, fabric softener, stain remover,
All you want to do was wash your clothes.
Select the wrong settings and you might ruin your clothes. The questions have to be answered correctly.
We _want_ things to do our particular bidding. The reason that the options for doing so is frustrating is nothing more complicated than wishing that everybody else were just like us.
Referring to one specific example from the author:
The Scrabble game plays music because many people _like_that_feature_. Some probably even threw away their previous version of their Scrabble game just so that they could have that feature. I guarantee that if most people did not like the feature it would not have made to commercial production. What the author dislikes is merely that there are so many other people with a taste in Scrabble different from his own that his own preference is in the minority.
-R
One post below described a college radio station that changed to using a strict playlist, and that _gained_ listeners to such an extent that the local commercial radio station noticed and had to change their playlist.
This is a bad thing???
I, personally, have no interest in commercial radio, but I am not so fossilized that I do not remember my youth. Kids listen to what their friends listen to, and this is a good thing. It adds to what someone once called the "creative commons" of our culture. The station that caters to the lowest common denominator fulfills that role best. More power to them, I say.
Once one examines the question as to why anyone would ever listen to the radio at all, it becomes more clear that the radio's only power is in its ability to create a shared experience. Put a different way, suppose there were a radio station that by magic guarantee, broadcast only what *you* *personally* wanted to hear at that exact time - anyone else listening would quickly want to twist the dial - again by virtue of magic guarantee. My question to you would be: would you listen to such a station? Remember, there'd be _no_ possibility of meeting someone in the hallway or at the store who might have heard the broadcast. Would you be interested in listening to such a radio station? I submit not. I submit that to at least some degree, we listen to the radio (and watch the TV, too) with the expectation that we are not the only ones experiencing that broadcast.
-R