MS is to big to become "irrelevent." Many people said the same thing about IBM, and they haven't.
I think a more accurate term would be "not as relevant as they have been." It used to be that if you wanted technology, you looked to Microsoft. (because they made sure they were the only game in town) Now, people are willing to look elsewhere. People and businesses have started to realize that there are other options out there, and MS isn't the only game in town. But you can be sure that MS isn't going to lose their monopoly without a fight. I am fairly confident that their vision will be clouded with their own FUD, and they will slip in the marketplace.
Like him or dislike him...but I wish every slashdot writer was so thoughtful and lucid. (And knew what karma whoring is!)
Good answers. A good read.
You forgot a category - those who don't care about him. I am not ragging on him by saying I don't care about him, but I really haven't seen him in anything since Stand By Me (that I remember). I have never liked Start Trek or its variations. But I agree with your assessment of the interview answers. It was a good read. I have seen his name on Slashdot several times, and thought I'd read the interview. It was a good read, he seems to have a pretty good grasp on things. Hey, he calls bullshit on movie studios and says things like he doesn't want to come off "like a total douche". Gotta love that.
I don't think it is a slam to say I don't care about him, I am sure he doesn't care about me either. I'll bet fanboys get quite annoying. Good interview though, I wish more of the Slashdot interviewees were half this good.
Isn't that pretty much the (internal) argument that a lot of/.'ers make in regards pirating Microsoft software? Bill Gates is filthy rich, what me worry?
I thought the same thing at first - then I realized that I don't have a contract with Gates to pay him anything. There's your difference.
But let's look at this...
Jackson was paid "enough to rebuild Baghdad"
That amount was less than what he was contracted to get. (20%)
So how many Baghdads could New Line rebuild? How many Baghdads could New Line rebuild with the money that they withheld from Jackson?
So who is being greedy here?
Many of you already know this, but one of the great things about linux LiveCDs is the ability to work on an otherwise screwed-up computer, and salvage it (or the data on it, etc.)....To anyone in the/. crowd that has not played with LiveCDs yet (or linux at all) you should seriously consider burning a copy and seeing what all the fuss is about.
I would agree, but it is useful for running on Windows as well. At work, my boss has mandated that I run Windows. But with VMware, I can boot up and run my favorite bootable distro (currently Damn Small). Since on some distros you can install new packages, and VMware lets you save snapshots, boot time is shorter and you can customize it. I use VMware if I want to check out the latest bootable distro but don't want to reboot my PC to do it. Creating your own bootable distro? Testing it isn't much easier than firing it up in VMware.
I think that bootable distros are one of those things that we never thought we would get so much use out of, but now that we have them they are very handy.
Everyone reading this site while blocking ads is able to do so only because of people like me who do view them (and subscribers).
I provide content for this site, by posting comments. So does everyone else. Without comments, this site wouldn't exist.
I don't block ads, because they don't bother me. I do block popups. Advertisers are the leeches. Advertising is fine, I understand the need for it. But they can't leave well enough alone. We can't just have commercials in TV programs, we now have to have product placement as well. Websites can't just have ads, they have to have popups or deceptive practices. You can't just watch a movie, you have to watch commercials before it and endure the endless advertising of "merchandising opportunities".
IMO, these companies are causing their own problems.
Somehow I'm not able to shed any tears for poor little Target and Toys R Us. I suspect that they are big boys who can take care of themselves when it comes to Amazon.
Those are just big name examples. What about all the smaller companies that deal with Amazon? I believe that you missed the entire point of the post.
Disclaimer: I work for neither Amazon nor Google. I'm not getting paid for this. The reason I'm saying all this is because Amazon is the only company I've dealt with over the past few years that has made me feel like a human instead of a problem.
Amazon, however, isn't very good to other businesses. Have you noticed how they sold Toys R Us products. They slowly started shrinking the name "Toys R Us" in favor of Amazon. It was "Amazon presents Toys R Us" then the products were just called Amazon products. The same thing kind of happened with Target stuff on Amazon. If you are a business, you have to pretty much sell your soul to deal with them (much like Wal*Mart).
50 years is a LONG time
on
The Onion in 2056
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
50 years from now it's going to be pretty much like it is now with a few more conveniences, but we aren't going to see a wholesale change in the world as is frequently supposed by so-called futurists.
OK, so you don't get the joke. BUT. Aside from that, you are quite simply wrong. Look at 1955 compared to today. Try taking someone from 1955 and explaining to them what the internet is. Email? TV was new an emerging technology then. GPS. The cold war, the Vietnam war, the farce going on in Iraq right now. The Berlin Wall, HIV and AIDS, breast implants, lasic eye surgery, reality TV, Starbucks, cellphones.... It would all seem like... well, an edition of the Onion to them.
Now think of 1950 compared to 1900.
A lot can happen in 50 years. Things that we probably wouldn't even understand now.
In my considerable experience with the matter, "as good or better" is almost never a consideration. It is entirely a cost-driven decision.
And you usually get what you pay for.
Where I work, we are hiring. It is tough to find good people. But I work at a small company where "good enough" doesn't cut it. We have to hire really good people because there is no slack to be had. Once you get hired, and get up to speed, you have a lot of responsibilities and ownership of things. There is no hiding here, as there are in bigger companies. You can't just "get by" here, you are expected to bust your ass and get work done. I think a lot of programmers, especially ones who have been in big companies, are very used to not really getting a lot done. There is just a different attitude about things at big companies vs small ones. At a small company, if you don't pull your weight, you are fired. At my last job, we had a guy who would work about 3 hours a day, the rest was just goofing off. He was put on probation (for 6 months!) and was finally fired after a year. A YEAR!
I think that good IT staff is hard to come by because nobody wants to let them go.
"Learn to do things without pretty GUIs. That's the best way to learn."
Why?
I can't wait for your reply...
Because if you don't, you are tied to the GUI. People always learn much more when they learn the concepts behind something instead of just learning the actions. GUIs have problems, are designed poorly, etc. Many times the GUIs are just interfacing the command line anyway. You can always NOT use the command line, but you can't learn it instantly. GUIs differ greatly, and sometimes don't implement things the way that make sense to everyone.
Here is a simple example. I work for a company that does ecommerce. We made changes on the server to allow for free shipping on about 35 products for the site. How to test it? Well, I had to create a shopping cart first, then.... click through, find 35 items, and add them each in succession? Ick. I had all the item numbers, so I built a quick script that built the url and called "firefox $URL". It opened up each item in a new tab, then I could just click ADD TO CART, verify the shipping was free, go to the next tab, etc. If I didn't have a quick script, it would have been a much longer process, lots of clicking and copy/paste.
You either are interested or you are not, with or without religion. If you had said social constructs or culture, I would have agreed, but blaming religion squarely is crazy.
Many religions fall just shy of brainwashing (and some clearly cross that line). Religions are belief systems. If you believe something without having reasonable proof of it, then it can be very dangerous. In my opinion, most organized religions are dangerous. They preach things as fact that have no basis in fact. Magic underwear, healing powers, protection from harm, mind-reading, etc. You name it, some religion probably preaches it as fact. Time and time again, throughout our history - right up until today - organized religion has been a very very dangerous thing.
The only reason people don't see it is because they are most likely caught up in their own belief system. For some reason, people seem to think that OTHER belief systems are weird while theirs is fact. (not seeing how equally inplausible their beliefs are) Is this a fault of the religion, or the people who practice it? A religion *is* the people who practice it. There are no pure religions. They are created, changed, updated, etc. It boggles my mind that so many people have been duped by it, in so many different ways.
You hit some good ones. Especially the ability to FFWD over boring parts. That cut Star Wars EP II down to about 45 minutes for me (and it was still pretty unwatchable).
But something else to consider - I'll buy movies I want to see. Why would I spend $20 minimum (me and wife - snacks not included) to see a movie that may or may not be good? I can wait for the DVD and buy it for a few dollars more. I am sick of every movie being overhyped as the "best movie of the year" and a "hit new film". They grab quotes from nobodys, who were probably paid to say them, and hype hype hype. You only have to be burned by this a couple of times before you say "No more!". I haven't been to the theater for about a year, and I am convinced I am not missing anything.
Yes, there is still something cool about seeing a movie on the big screen. But the movie has to be worth it. The last one that I think was worth it was Kill Bill 2. But I ended up buying it anyway. So it isn't like the movie industry is hurting, they are still getting their money - off of an industry that would have never have happened if they had their way. VCRs would have been outlawed, and the home movie market would have been squashed. They are just as short-sighted as the RIAA.
Come on. Dell "decides" not to include XP N with any of their PCs. Gee, I wonder why.
And the public could give a rat's ass about WMP shipping with windows, but the public also watches NACAR and shops at Wal*Mart. They aren't about fair trade and good taste, they have a very simplistic view of the world.
I don't feel the need to expand on any of these points, if you don't understand then I feel sorry for you.
Yes, but when you take a developer and pay him to read OSS, you do two things. One, you take his time away from contributing to your product code that makes you money. Two, you potentially open yourself to accusations that you took OSS code and copied it into your closed source software. It makes sense to pay someone to look at the OSS movement and distill the information to management so they can make decisions based off that information. That's what it means to "hire someone to understand open source".
I understand what you say, but they still don't need to hire someone. All the code is there, and MS has smart developers. As far as taking someone prominent out of the OSS community, that makes sense. Except for the fact that they are taking someone from Gentoo. Gentoo has more of a cult following, and taking someone from that group won't really hurt the OSS community. If they got RMS... actually, that would be funny to think about - Gates, Ballmer, and RMS sitting in a conference room engaged in deep conversation. And I can't imagine that MS has approached any big names in the Linux community for employment, for fear of the bad press.
Get a wrist pad, and take up Aiki-jujutsu
on
Advocating Dvorak
·
· Score: 1
How to save your wrists, in three easy steps.
Step 1 - get a good gel wristpad, for your keyboard AND your mouse. I am amazed that people still don't use these things.
Step 2 - learn how to type. I am amazed that a lot of people still don't know how to type.
Step 3 - laptops suck for wrist support, stay away from them. My wrists always hurt after using one for any amount of time.
Oh, and as a side note, Aiki-jujutsu or any other martial art that employs wrist locks will teach you what real wrist pain is, and will turn your wrists to jelly after a few years. At that point, carpal tunnel is like a gnat.
Yeah huge fucking idiots that managed to create the largest software company in the world and the world's richest man. God I wish i was huge fucking idiot, maybe then i can amass a $50 billion net worth.
Since there are others out there who obviously don't 'get it', allow me to explain it to you. They don't have to hire someone to understand open source. It is all out there, it is open, it is free. It is conceptual. OSS isn't hiding anything. What is fscking stupid is that MS is hiring someone to try and make them understand something that is right in front of their face. Their answer to everything is to throw money at it. That is (I believe) what the original poster was referring to.
A wise person once told me that the difference between a good choice and a bad choice is that a good choice gives you more choices.
Considering how many types of (strech) pierchings and tatoos are difficult to reverse, why would someone want to get one? What kind of long term plan/goal does it promote?
I got a tattoo 3 years ago, and I don't regret it for a second. I am 35 now. I wanted one for 10 years, and got exactly what I wanted after I knew it wouldn't be a mistake. It wasn't an impulse. It is a multi-colored dragon that circles my arm around the bicep, and is high enough that it can be barely noticed when I wear short sleeves. It took 8 hours in all, 3 outlining and 5 coloring, and cost me over a grand. It is, quite simply, a fucking amazing piece of artwork. It has meaning too, I thought about what I wanted for 10 years. I don't feel the need to describe the meaning to everyone, because it is for me. It is a reminder for me, of who I am and who I want to be.
I have no problem in explaining this to anyone who asks.
Now if I came in with a face tattoo of Jesus riding a Harley, or if I had spike implanted in my eyelids, I could see why it could cause some concern for management. I went 2 years at my last job before anyone noticed my tattoo. It shouldn't be what people remember about you. Yes, they were really popular a few years ago, especially tribal armbands. Everyone seemed to have them. But think of this - those people may become management. Then what? I am a manager. I certainly won't discriminate against someone based on the fact that they have body mods. Now the type and severity of body mod may be a window into the person's persona. But that is what you get when you do these things. They are reflections of you, so if that is who you are, then wear it proudly.
Some things are complex and require more knowledge to use effectively than others not because they are poorly designed but because they are much more powerful and versatile.
Not only are they more versatile than consumer electronics, they are vastly more versatile than the computers of yesteryear.
The first PC that I bought with my own money cost me $2100. It was a 386-DX (not a weenie SX) with 4 MB memory. It cost me about $100 extra for that extra 2MB over the standard 2MB. It had both kinds of floppy drives, an 80MB hard drive, and a VGA card. I ran a program to double the hard drive space, and it f'd up on several occasions and I lost everything. (was it called Stacker?) It was a pretty sweet setup. However, it was not versatile. Software was limited, although I thoroughly enjoyed using Borland Turbo Pascal, Links 386, and Wolfenstein 3D on it. There was no internet (unless you count BBSs). Porn consisted of scans, by someone using one of those hand scanners (anyone else remember those?). Linux didn't even really exist at that time.
How versatile was this machine? Well, for its day it was awesome. But it could do nowhere near what even the most basic machine can do today. Today we can download gigabytes of data over the internet, create and edit videos, create and edit digital photos, listen to music, watch DVDs, burn CDs and DVDs, play games and communicate with people across the world, banking, shopping... The list goes on and on. How on earth does anyone think that by adding all this complexity we should be able to make the PC simpler?
My theory is that the PC will not get simpler, it will get more complex. We are getting more complex in the way we think. We as a whole will understand and be able to use the PC more effectively. You can't make something like the PC as simple as a VCR. (hell, even some people don't understand how to use those) You lose its power if you make it simple enough for the newbie to use. I am only 35 years old, and I didn't have a PC growing up. There will be a day when the PC will be older than everyone on the planet. Then maybe our mindset will change, and there will be no "newbies". My parents do not understand how to use the computer, and barely understand email. They just don't get it. That will not be the case with today's kids. They will not know what it was like without the PC and the internet. Only they will be able to make the industry progress. My 10 year old niece knows how to use a PC better than my parents do. It is just e-volution.:)
Merits and dangers of technology aside, activists seem more and more stupid these days. Yeah, shock value gets you *attention* -- but not credibility. MLK had protestors dress up in their sunday best, looking dignified. If they'd run through the streets nude and shouting, it would have been a fine spectacle, but we'd probably still have seperate water fountains.
So yeah. Fight the man. Spark debate over nanotech, GM food, war, whatever. Just do it with some sense, OK? Protest is already in danger of becoming dead as a vector for social change. Turning it into an easy parody of itself isn't helping.
Maybe I am too cynical, but I have seen wayyy too much product placement recently to automatically believe this story.
1. I have never even heard of these pants until now. Not that I am closely following the pants market, but this could easily be an advertising stunt.
2. I moved from Chicago a few months ago, but I used to work about a block from this store. I thought it was closing due to lack of sales, and that was a couple of years ago. Eddie Bauer, waning in sales....
3. Have you heard about the naked people protesting the new Eddie Bauer Nanotech pants? These new Nanotech pants from Eddie Bauer sure are causing an uproar because they repel stains. All stains. Isn't that amazing? That's right, the new stain-repellent Nanotech pants from Eddie Bauer. You should probably check them out to see what all the fuss is about.
Slashdot Mirror
I think a more accurate term would be "not as relevant as they have been." It used to be that if you wanted technology, you looked to Microsoft. (because they made sure they were the only game in town) Now, people are willing to look elsewhere. People and businesses have started to realize that there are other options out there, and MS isn't the only game in town. But you can be sure that MS isn't going to lose their monopoly without a fight. I am fairly confident that their vision will be clouded with their own FUD, and they will slip in the marketplace.
Good answers. A good read.
You forgot a category - those who don't care about him. I am not ragging on him by saying I don't care about him, but I really haven't seen him in anything since Stand By Me (that I remember). I have never liked Start Trek or its variations. But I agree with your assessment of the interview answers. It was a good read. I have seen his name on Slashdot several times, and thought I'd read the interview. It was a good read, he seems to have a pretty good grasp on things. Hey, he calls bullshit on movie studios and says things like he doesn't want to come off "like a total douche". Gotta love that.
I don't think it is a slam to say I don't care about him, I am sure he doesn't care about me either. I'll bet fanboys get quite annoying. Good interview though, I wish more of the Slashdot interviewees were half this good.
I thought the same thing at first - then I realized that I don't have a contract with Gates to pay him anything. There's your difference.
But let's look at this...
Jackson was paid "enough to rebuild Baghdad"
That amount was less than what he was contracted to get. (20%)
So how many Baghdads could New Line rebuild? How many Baghdads could New Line rebuild with the money that they withheld from Jackson?
So who is being greedy here?
I would agree, but it is useful for running on Windows as well. At work, my boss has mandated that I run Windows. But with VMware, I can boot up and run my favorite bootable distro (currently Damn Small). Since on some distros you can install new packages, and VMware lets you save snapshots, boot time is shorter and you can customize it. I use VMware if I want to check out the latest bootable distro but don't want to reboot my PC to do it. Creating your own bootable distro? Testing it isn't much easier than firing it up in VMware.
I think that bootable distros are one of those things that we never thought we would get so much use out of, but now that we have them they are very handy.
I provide content for this site, by posting comments. So does everyone else. Without comments, this site wouldn't exist.
I don't block ads, because they don't bother me. I do block popups. Advertisers are the leeches. Advertising is fine, I understand the need for it. But they can't leave well enough alone. We can't just have commercials in TV programs, we now have to have product placement as well. Websites can't just have ads, they have to have popups or deceptive practices. You can't just watch a movie, you have to watch commercials before it and endure the endless advertising of "merchandising opportunities".
IMO, these companies are causing their own problems.
Those are just big name examples. What about all the smaller companies that deal with Amazon? I believe that you missed the entire point of the post.
Amazon, however, isn't very good to other businesses. Have you noticed how they sold Toys R Us products. They slowly started shrinking the name "Toys R Us" in favor of Amazon. It was "Amazon presents Toys R Us" then the products were just called Amazon products. The same thing kind of happened with Target stuff on Amazon. If you are a business, you have to pretty much sell your soul to deal with them (much like Wal*Mart).
Fuck off, asshat. (mod me flamebait)
OK, so you don't get the joke. BUT. Aside from that, you are quite simply wrong. Look at 1955 compared to today. Try taking someone from 1955 and explaining to them what the internet is. Email? TV was new an emerging technology then. GPS. The cold war, the Vietnam war, the farce going on in Iraq right now. The Berlin Wall, HIV and AIDS, breast implants, lasic eye surgery, reality TV, Starbucks, cellphones.... It would all seem like ... well, an edition of the Onion to them.
Now think of 1950 compared to 1900.
A lot can happen in 50 years. Things that we probably wouldn't even understand now.
And you usually get what you pay for.
Where I work, we are hiring. It is tough to find good people. But I work at a small company where "good enough" doesn't cut it. We have to hire really good people because there is no slack to be had. Once you get hired, and get up to speed, you have a lot of responsibilities and ownership of things. There is no hiding here, as there are in bigger companies. You can't just "get by" here, you are expected to bust your ass and get work done. I think a lot of programmers, especially ones who have been in big companies, are very used to not really getting a lot done. There is just a different attitude about things at big companies vs small ones. At a small company, if you don't pull your weight, you are fired. At my last job, we had a guy who would work about 3 hours a day, the rest was just goofing off. He was put on probation (for 6 months!) and was finally fired after a year. A YEAR!
I think that good IT staff is hard to come by because nobody wants to let them go.
Because if you don't, you are tied to the GUI. People always learn much more when they learn the concepts behind something instead of just learning the actions. GUIs have problems, are designed poorly, etc. Many times the GUIs are just interfacing the command line anyway. You can always NOT use the command line, but you can't learn it instantly. GUIs differ greatly, and sometimes don't implement things the way that make sense to everyone.
Here is a simple example. I work for a company that does ecommerce. We made changes on the server to allow for free shipping on about 35 products for the site. How to test it? Well, I had to create a shopping cart first, then .... click through, find 35 items, and add them each in succession? Ick. I had all the item numbers, so I built a quick script that built the url and called "firefox $URL". It opened up each item in a new tab, then I could just click ADD TO CART, verify the shipping was free, go to the next tab, etc. If I didn't have a quick script, it would have been a much longer process, lots of clicking and copy/paste.
Exactly. So why Microsoft is developing a command shell again?
Many religions fall just shy of brainwashing (and some clearly cross that line). Religions are belief systems. If you believe something without having reasonable proof of it, then it can be very dangerous. In my opinion, most organized religions are dangerous. They preach things as fact that have no basis in fact. Magic underwear, healing powers, protection from harm, mind-reading, etc. You name it, some religion probably preaches it as fact. Time and time again, throughout our history - right up until today - organized religion has been a very very dangerous thing.
The only reason people don't see it is because they are most likely caught up in their own belief system. For some reason, people seem to think that OTHER belief systems are weird while theirs is fact. (not seeing how equally inplausible their beliefs are) Is this a fault of the religion, or the people who practice it? A religion *is* the people who practice it. There are no pure religions. They are created, changed, updated, etc. It boggles my mind that so many people have been duped by it, in so many different ways.
But something else to consider - I'll buy movies I want to see. Why would I spend $20 minimum (me and wife - snacks not included) to see a movie that may or may not be good? I can wait for the DVD and buy it for a few dollars more. I am sick of every movie being overhyped as the "best movie of the year" and a "hit new film". They grab quotes from nobodys, who were probably paid to say them, and hype hype hype. You only have to be burned by this a couple of times before you say "No more!". I haven't been to the theater for about a year, and I am convinced I am not missing anything.
Yes, there is still something cool about seeing a movie on the big screen. But the movie has to be worth it. The last one that I think was worth it was Kill Bill 2. But I ended up buying it anyway. So it isn't like the movie industry is hurting, they are still getting their money - off of an industry that would have never have happened if they had their way. VCRs would have been outlawed, and the home movie market would have been squashed. They are just as short-sighted as the RIAA.
Nope. Graduated in '93. Why?
And the public could give a rat's ass about WMP shipping with windows, but the public also watches NACAR and shops at Wal*Mart. They aren't about fair trade and good taste, they have a very simplistic view of the world.
I don't feel the need to expand on any of these points, if you don't understand then I feel sorry for you.
Add Columbine to that summary, and you've got a Jon Katz story. Sheesh.
I understand what you say, but they still don't need to hire someone. All the code is there, and MS has smart developers. As far as taking someone prominent out of the OSS community, that makes sense. Except for the fact that they are taking someone from Gentoo. Gentoo has more of a cult following, and taking someone from that group won't really hurt the OSS community. If they got RMS... actually, that would be funny to think about - Gates, Ballmer, and RMS sitting in a conference room engaged in deep conversation. And I can't imagine that MS has approached any big names in the Linux community for employment, for fear of the bad press.
Step 1 - get a good gel wristpad, for your keyboard AND your mouse. I am amazed that people still don't use these things.
Step 2 - learn how to type. I am amazed that a lot of people still don't know how to type.
Step 3 - laptops suck for wrist support, stay away from them. My wrists always hurt after using one for any amount of time.
Oh, and as a side note, Aiki-jujutsu or any other martial art that employs wrist locks will teach you what real wrist pain is, and will turn your wrists to jelly after a few years. At that point, carpal tunnel is like a gnat.
Since there are others out there who obviously don't 'get it', allow me to explain it to you. They don't have to hire someone to understand open source. It is all out there, it is open, it is free. It is conceptual. OSS isn't hiding anything. What is fscking stupid is that MS is hiring someone to try and make them understand something that is right in front of their face. Their answer to everything is to throw money at it. That is (I believe) what the original poster was referring to.
If the Utah gov needs help in compiling that list, they can have my history file.
We are talking about Mormons. God chooses for them to have kids, and God is their moral guide. Stop pretending that these people have a choice.
Considering how many types of (strech) pierchings and tatoos are difficult to reverse, why would someone want to get one? What kind of long term plan/goal does it promote?
I got a tattoo 3 years ago, and I don't regret it for a second. I am 35 now. I wanted one for 10 years, and got exactly what I wanted after I knew it wouldn't be a mistake. It wasn't an impulse. It is a multi-colored dragon that circles my arm around the bicep, and is high enough that it can be barely noticed when I wear short sleeves. It took 8 hours in all, 3 outlining and 5 coloring, and cost me over a grand. It is, quite simply, a fucking amazing piece of artwork. It has meaning too, I thought about what I wanted for 10 years. I don't feel the need to describe the meaning to everyone, because it is for me. It is a reminder for me, of who I am and who I want to be.
I have no problem in explaining this to anyone who asks.
Now if I came in with a face tattoo of Jesus riding a Harley, or if I had spike implanted in my eyelids, I could see why it could cause some concern for management. I went 2 years at my last job before anyone noticed my tattoo. It shouldn't be what people remember about you. Yes, they were really popular a few years ago, especially tribal armbands. Everyone seemed to have them. But think of this - those people may become management. Then what? I am a manager. I certainly won't discriminate against someone based on the fact that they have body mods. Now the type and severity of body mod may be a window into the person's persona. But that is what you get when you do these things. They are reflections of you, so if that is who you are, then wear it proudly.
Not only are they more versatile than consumer electronics, they are vastly more versatile than the computers of yesteryear.
The first PC that I bought with my own money cost me $2100. It was a 386-DX (not a weenie SX) with 4 MB memory. It cost me about $100 extra for that extra 2MB over the standard 2MB. It had both kinds of floppy drives, an 80MB hard drive, and a VGA card. I ran a program to double the hard drive space, and it f'd up on several occasions and I lost everything. (was it called Stacker?) It was a pretty sweet setup. However, it was not versatile. Software was limited, although I thoroughly enjoyed using Borland Turbo Pascal, Links 386, and Wolfenstein 3D on it. There was no internet (unless you count BBSs). Porn consisted of scans, by someone using one of those hand scanners (anyone else remember those?). Linux didn't even really exist at that time.
How versatile was this machine? Well, for its day it was awesome. But it could do nowhere near what even the most basic machine can do today. Today we can download gigabytes of data over the internet, create and edit videos, create and edit digital photos, listen to music, watch DVDs, burn CDs and DVDs, play games and communicate with people across the world, banking, shopping... The list goes on and on. How on earth does anyone think that by adding all this complexity we should be able to make the PC simpler?
My theory is that the PC will not get simpler, it will get more complex. We are getting more complex in the way we think. We as a whole will understand and be able to use the PC more effectively. You can't make something like the PC as simple as a VCR. (hell, even some people don't understand how to use those) You lose its power if you make it simple enough for the newbie to use. I am only 35 years old, and I didn't have a PC growing up. There will be a day when the PC will be older than everyone on the planet. Then maybe our mindset will change, and there will be no "newbies". My parents do not understand how to use the computer, and barely understand email. They just don't get it. That will not be the case with today's kids. They will not know what it was like without the PC and the internet. Only they will be able to make the industry progress. My 10 year old niece knows how to use a PC better than my parents do. It is just e-volution. :)
Maybe I am too cynical, but I have seen wayyy too much product placement recently to automatically believe this story.
1. I have never even heard of these pants until now. Not that I am closely following the pants market, but this could easily be an advertising stunt.
2. I moved from Chicago a few months ago, but I used to work about a block from this store. I thought it was closing due to lack of sales, and that was a couple of years ago. Eddie Bauer, waning in sales....
3. Have you heard about the naked people protesting the new Eddie Bauer Nanotech pants? These new Nanotech pants from Eddie Bauer sure are causing an uproar because they repel stains. All stains. Isn't that amazing? That's right, the new stain-repellent Nanotech pants from Eddie Bauer. You should probably check them out to see what all the fuss is about.