yes, MS is the evil empire. Yes, Linux is the "better" OS.
but nobody wants to use something where they are made to feel stupid when they first sit down and use it.
M$=EE: Agreed.
Linux="Better": But is it really? Is it better for everyone, or just geeks?
It seems established as the OS of choice for those with the knowhow to handle a CLI and to configure a system to their liking. That's present company.
But for people who don't know the difference between an OS and a windowing system, who don't want to learn how to configure a system but rather want to use it right out of the box, who got a computer so they could send e-mail and look at web pages and type business letters and scan pictures of the kids, maybe handle finances, all with as little overhead (of time and brain power) as possible -- these are the bulk of computer users. Can anyone bring me one such person who likes Linux?
I'm a drooling Mac user myself, so I really don't know what I'm talking about. That's why I'm asking and not telling. But this is not a trivial issue -- if you make a technology that is theoretically "superior" from a technical standpoint but don't provide an easy way for people to use it, the job ain't done yet. And Mr. Wigginz is right on -- no one likes being made to feel stupid.
(Congratulations, you've just bought the best car on the market! See all those empty spaces under the hood? You can install any carboretur, radiator, transmission, and catalytic converter you want! The customer's always right! What, you don't have 31337 m3ch4n1x ski11z? Get off the road, luser!)
([And I'll tell you one thing -- ain't no way in hell my mom's gonna go looking on discussion forums for a scanner driver! The blueberry iMac was hard enough for her to learn how to use already.])
The MMPI has been widely used as a psychological tool for decades, as a personality "type" indicator for therapeutic purposes as well as a clinical diagnosis tool.
However, it was designed ONLY to diagnose neuroses and psychoses, under 50s-era Freudian ideas of pathology. As a result, it has a scale for each postulated type of deviancy, including schizophrenia, psychosis, masculinity/femininity (both genders for both sexes), paranoia, etc. And that's all it does. Essentially it asks, "How schizophrenic ARE you?" Virtually guaranteeing something diagnosable. How a computer can suffer from Freudian neuroses is beyond me. And as a previous poster pointed out, it's clearly culturally biased towards Americans. Yet it's routinely abused as a standard personaliy test, like the Myers-Briggs (a different animal entirely).
(An earlier poster remarked that the MMPI successfully predicted that a test subject had undergone a previous trauma, even though he had tried to hide it. This would be a good example of the test's purpose of diagnosing problems, at which it can be quite effective. But this is different from creating a complete psychological profile.)
As for this Dr. Epstein, the psychologist who administered this bogus test to this imaginary person: he may have a Harvard pedigree, but he's also editor-in-chief of Psychology Today. That's a fluffy pop-psych mag that populates many supermarket checkout lines, and is always quick with captivating new insights as to why men never ask directions. And now he's being discussed on/.. Sheesh.
Hey, if you're looking to go searching for a big mythical aquatic pleiosaur, there's no need to fly over the Atlantic. Just head up to Vermont or NY and check out Champ!
I've read more detailed, recent reports of Champ sightings than anything from Nessie enthusiasts. They've even figured out his (her?) taxonomic identity and given it a scientific genus (Champtanystropheus). If you go to the lakeside park in Burlington there's a statue commemorating all the sightings. Champ has even been commemorated by Uhaul!
And the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks are gorgeous this time of year.;-)
I find it funny when I hear about environmentalists who are vegetarian because they believe that animals should be held up to the same level as humans. Has it ever occurred to these people that animals (Surprise Surprise!) eat other animals? The only difference between what we do and what a wild cougar does is that we _debate_ whether we should do what we are doing. The most ironic part is that by debating, we prove our distinction, nay... superiority over the animal kingdom.
Actually, I'm a vegetarian, but I'm not opposed to hunting. I am opposed to factory farming. I say, if you're willing to kill it yourself, bon appetit. At least those animals get to live decent lives before we take them. Not only that, but depending on where you go looking for food, if you're not careful there's a chance a bigger animal might get you. Fair's fair, and if you don't like the rules, don't play. (I don't.)
Are you suggesting that wild cougars take entire species of animals & keep them chained up & fed so that the cougar population can grow fat & lazy & not have to work for food? I don't think you are. But there's a fundamental difference between predation and agriculture.
[Incidentally, as a rule I never preach vegetarianism, acknowledging it as an eccentricity of mine. But you provoked me. 8{)> ]
As for rational discourse, it's a tool that our species has adapted to help ensure survival. Nothing more, nothing less. Boy has it worked! I dig it & wouldn't have it any other way. That's why I'm here. But let's not get too full of ourselves. We are a species, & we do what we do best.
You think we couldn't kill a mammoth with a pit, or a glyptodont with poison tree frog arrows? I watched a film of the Kung! of the Kalahari (bushmen) kill a giraffe with sharp sticks (and poison).
I saw that film on the contemporary !Kung San hunter-gatherer culture in college. Unfortunately, it wasn't particularly accurate: After following the tribe of hunters for days and watching them harasss this poor giraffe, stalking it, poking it with spears until it looked like a pincushion, the Western camera crew shot the beast with a rifle. Then they filmed it falling dramatically, like a mighty oak felled by the logger, as if these noble savages were claiming their quarry.
A minimum-wage worker can walk into a Barne's & Noble with his last $4.99 left (after paying rent and buying groceries for his kids) and walk out with a copy of Platos "The Republic". You will never create a communications medium as radically easy to disseminate as that.
Will there be a version of iCab for Windows or Linux?
We are not interested in Windows and we believe that the graphical interface of Linux is not very good (compared to the Mac). We would like to focus on the Mac and want to make a good browser for Mac OS in the next few months.
So yeah, they're German Mac bigots. Guess it takes all types.
And just who are Juno and NetZero targeting? They are going after people who cannot pony up fifteen bucks a month for legitimate Internet access. Now ask yourself: What value can these people possibly contribute to the Internet at large?
[snip]
Common sense dictates that the majority of this crap is coming from uneducated, lower-class people at the very bottom of the wage scale. Juno and Netzero are dedicated to making sure that these people get Internet access. Well, you can call me elitist, but I call that bullshit.
[Emphasis added.]
One of the problems all along with the Net as a civic tool and instrument of democracy (and we all believe in that, right?) is the fact that for most of its life it's been a playground for wealthy, educated, urban, mostly young, white guys. In the past couple years with the decreasing cost of computers and net access -- and, yes, with the increasing commercialization of the net -- this has been changing. But we still have a long way to go.
What is this perceived danger of bringing into the net more (gasp) working-class people? (or women? nonwhites? people from outside the US? even the developing world?) The danger is that our sacred civic institutions like/. get infiltrated with people of different backgrounds. They might even have opinions that are offensive to our sensibilities. Fortunately, frequently the lower-class outsiders might lack the postgraduate-level writing skills the we the eleet have (duh!) so we can easily dismiss them as lowlifes.
The poster clearly equates thus:
Upper class = signal
Lower class = noise
Most of the folks who object to the original elitist troll have said, in essence, "Let the poor benighted heathens come to the Net so we can educate them. Well, maybe they can learn from us (speaking as a degree-holding white boy), but we might wanna open our ears too, maybe we can learn something about the world beyond our CRTs and office parks.
The walls of the country club are coming down brick by brick. Hallelujah.
It has the most sophisticated filtering system I've seen. You can filter cookies using many criteria, including (my favorite) blocking cookies that come from a different domain from the main page. AND you can filter IMAGES by size, w/ options to exclude sizes including 1x1px (this blocks most web bugs) as well as most common advertisement sizes, like the ubiquitous banner. What you get instead is a blank banner-(or whatever-)sized space with an icon of a coffee filter in the corner. Hee!
And speaking as a web designer, the feature doesn't compromise the legitimate use of spacer GIFs.* Page design is preserved, and who cares if the 1-px. GIF is actually loaded or not.
*Yes, I know that with CSS we shouldn't need spacer GIFs. I will rejoice when browser support for CSS is consistent enough for us to rely on them. Meanwhile, though, clients still tend to expect web pages to be as as precisely designed as print, and sometimes you gotta cheat. But that's another discussion.
Glad someone got it. True, Dave gets long-winded, and overly defensive. I wish I'd had time to edit the article more (though Dave would be furious if he found out I had).
But it makes a point I think needs to be made here, which is that mass-consumed culture does not necessarily equal bad culture. Thank you Chris, for pointing out the difference btwn an honest pop musician whose music happens to have commercial appeal (like Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Sting) and a fake pop musician who contrives style for $$$ (like Britney/BonJovi/NKOTB/yadayada). Nick, my apologies for subjecting you to that. Caveat emptor (or reador).
I'm of course biased b/c I totally adore Dave as a writer and he's aufully nice each time I see him on tour. (He puts original artwork on your copies of his books, not just autographs.)
Another point: researching obscure music and spending enough time listening to it to form an educated opinion of your favorite indie artists takes lots of time & resources, commendable tho it is. How many people know the frequency of their local college station? The listings of the local basement nightclub or rave promoters? Same with indie literature, or any other kinda art. Think too of the initiative and time it takes to become a Linux (or other indie OS) geek. Most people get their computers off the shelf, and listen to what they're playing on the radio on the way home, b/c they have priorities other than being on the cutting edge in every area of the artistic and technical world. Can we blame them? No.
Brace yourselves: Here's a long rant against the notion of being superior to mass-produced cool, by author Dave Eggers. Enjoy.
=====+
First, a primer: When I got your questions, I was provoked. You expressed many of the feelings I used to have, when I was in high school and college, about some of the people I admired at the time, people who at some point disappointed me in some way, or made moves I could not understand. So I took a few passages from your questions - those pertaining to or hinting at "selling out" - and I used them as a launching pad for a rant I've wanted to write for a while now, and more so than ever since my own book has become successful. And the rant was timely, because shortly after getting your questions, I was scheduled to speak at Yale, and so, assuming that their minds might be in a similar spot as yours, I read this, the below, to them, in slightly less polished form. The rant is directed to myself, age 20, as much as it is to you, so remember that if you ever want to take much offense.
----
You actually asked me the question: "Are you taking any steps to keep shit real?" I want you always to look back on this time as being a time when those words came out of your mouth.
Now, there was a time when such a question - albeit probably without the colloquial spin - would have originated from my own brain. Since I was thirteen, sitting in my orange-carpeted bedroom in ostensibly cutting-edge Lake Forest, Illinois, subscribing to the Village Voice and reading the earliest issues of Spin, I thought I had my ear to the railroad tracks of avant garde America. (Laurie Anderson, for example, had grown up only miles away!) I was always monitoring, with the most sensitive and well-calibrated apparatus, the degree of selloutitude exemplified by any given artist - musical, visual, theatrical, whatever. I was vigilant and merciless and knew it was my job to be so.
I bought R.E.M.'s first EP, Chronic Town, when it came out and thought I had found God. I loved Murmur, Reckoning, but then watched, with greater and greater dismay, as this obscure little band's audience grew, grew beyond obsessed people like myself, grew to encompass casual fans, people who had heard a song on the radio and picked up Green and listened for the hits. Old people liked them, and stupid people, and my moron neighbor who had sex with truck drivers. I wanted these phony R.E.M.-lovers dead.
But it was the band's fault, too. They played on Letterman. They switched record labels. Even their album covers seemed progressively more commercial. And when everyone I knew began liking them, I stopped. Had they changed, had their commitment to making art with integrity changed? I didn't care, because for me, any sort of popularity had an inverse relationship with what you term the keeping 'real' of 'shit.' When the Smiths became slightly popular they were sellouts. Bob Dylan appeared on MTV and of course was a sellout. Recently, just at dinner tonight, after a huge, sold-out reading by David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell (both sellouts), I was sitting next to an acquaintance, a very smart acquaintance married to the singer-songwriter of a very well-known band. I mentioned that I had seen the Flaming Lips the night before. She rolled her eyes. "Oh I really liked them on 90210," she sneered, assuming that this would put me and the band in our respective places.
However.
Was she aware that The Flaming Lips had composed an album requiring the simultaneous playing of four separate discs, on four separate CD players? Was she aware that the band had once, for a show at Lincoln Center, handed out to audience members something like 100 portable tape players, with 100 different tapes, and had them all played at the same time, creating a symphonic sort of effect, one which completely devastated everyone in attendance? I went on and on to her about the band's accomplishments, their experiments. Was she convinced that they were more than their one appearance with Jason Priestly? She was.
Now, at that concert the night before, Wayne Coyne, the lead singer, had himself addressed this issue, and to great effect. After playing much of their new album, the band paused and he spoke to the audience. I will paraphrase what he said:
"Hi. Well, some people get all bitter when some song of theirs gets popular, and they refuse to play it. But we're not like that. We're happy that people like this song. So here it goes."
Then they played the song. (You know the song.) "She Don't Use Jelly" is the song, and it is a silly song, and it was their most popular song. But to highlight their enthusiasm for playing the song, the band released, from the stage and from the balconies, about 200 balloons. (Some of the balloons, it should be noted, were released by two grown men in bunny suits.) Then while playing the song, Wayne sang with a puppet on his hand, who also sang into the microphone. It was fun. It was good.
But was it a sellout? Probably. By some standards, yes. Can a good band play their hit song? Should we hate them for this? Probably, probably. First 90210, now they go playing the song every stupid night. Everyone knows that 90210 is not cutting edge, and that a cutting edge alternarock band should not appear on such a show. That rule is clearly stated in the obligatory engrained computer-chip sellout manual that we were all given when we hit adolescence.
But this sellout manual serves only the lazy and small. Those who bestow sellouthood upon their former heroes are driven to do so by, first and foremost, the unshakable need to reduce. The average one of us - a taker-in of various and constant media, is absolutely overwhelmed - as he or she should be - with the sheer volume of artistic output in every conceivable medium given to the world every day - it is simply too much to begin to process or comprehend - and so we are forced to try to sort, to reduce. We designate, we label, we diminish, we create hierarchies and categories.
Through largely received wisdom, we rule out Tom Waits's new album because it's the same old same old, and we save $15. U2 has lost it, Radiohead is too popular. Country music is bad, Puff Daddy is bad, the last Wallace book was bad because that one reviewer said so. We decide that TV is bad unless it's the Sopranos. We liked Rick Moody and Jonathan Lethem and Jeffrey Eugenides until they allowed their books to become movies. And on and on. The point is that we do this and to a certain extent we must do this. We must create categories, and to an extent, hierarchies.
But you know what is easiest of all? When we dismiss. Oh how gloriously comforting, to be able to write someone off. Thus, in the overcrowded pantheon of alternarock bands, at a certain juncture, it became necessary for a certain brand of person to write off The Flaming Lips, despite the fact that everyone knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that their music was superb and groundbreaking and real. We could write them off because they shared a few minutes with Jason Priestley and that terrifying Tori Spelling person. Or we could write them off because too many magazines have talked about them. Or because it looked like the bassist was wearing too much gel in his hair.
One less thing to think about. Now, how to kill off the rest of our heroes, to better make room for new ones?
We liked Guided by Voices until they let Ric Ocasek produce their latest album, and everyone knows Ocasek is a sellout, having written those mushy Cars songs in the late 80s, and then - gasp! - produced Weezer's album, and of course Weezer's no good, because that Sweater song was on the radio, right, and dorky teenage girls were singing it and we cannot have that and so Weezer is bad and Ocasek is bad and Guided by Voices are bad, even if Spike Jonze did direct that one Weezer video, and we like Spike Jonze, don't we?
Oh. No. We don't. We don't like him anymore because he's married to Sofia Coppola, and she is not cool. Not cool. So bad in Godfather 3, such nepotism. So let's check off Spike Jonze - leaving room in our brains for who??
It's exhausting.
The only thing worse than this sort of activity is when people, students and teachers alike, run around college campuses calling each other racists and anti-Semites. It's born of boredom, lassitude. Too cowardly to address problems of substance where such problems actually are, we claw at those close to us. We point to our neighbor, in the khakis and sweater, and cry foul. It's ridiculous. We find enemies among our peers because we know them better, and their proximity and familiarity means we don't have to get off the couch to dismantle them.
And now, I am also a sellout. Here are my sins, many of which you may know about already:
First, I was a sellout because Might magazine took ads. Then I was a sellout because our pages were color, and not stapled together at the Kinko's. Then I was a sellout because I went to work for Esquire. Now I'm a sellout because my book has sold many copies. And because I have done many interviews. And because I have let people take my picture. And because my goddamn picture has been in just about every fucking magazine and newspaper printed in America.
And now, as far as McSweeney's is concerned, The Advocate interviewer wants to know if we're losing also our edge, if the magazine is selling out, hitting the mainstream, if we're still committed to publishing unknowns, and pieces killed by other magazines.
And the fact is, I don't give a fuck. When we did the last issue, this was my thought process: I saw a box. So I decided we'd do a box. We were given stories by some of our favorite writers - George Saunders, Rick Moody (who is uncool, uncool!), Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis, others - and so we published them. Did I wonder if people would think we were selling out, that we were not fulfilling the mission they had assumed we had committed ourselves to?
No. I did not. Nor will I ever. We just don't care. We care about doing what we want to do creatively. We want to be interested in it. We want it to challenge us. We want it to be difficult. We want to reinvent the stupid thing every time. Would I ever think, before I did something, of how those with sellout monitors would respond to this or that move? I would not. The second I sense a thought like that trickling into my brain, I will put my head under the tires of a bus.
You want to know how big a sellout I am?
A few months ago I wrote an article for Time magazine and was paid $12,000 for it I am about to write something, 1,000 words, 3 pages or so, for something called Forbes ASAP, and for that I will be paid $6,000 For two years, until five months ago, I was on the payroll of ESPN magazine, as a consultant and sometime contributor. I was paid handsomely for doing very little. Same with my stint at Esquire. One year I spent there, with little to no duties. I wore khakis every day. Another Might editor and I, for almost a year, contributed to Details magazine, under pseudonyms, and were paid $2000 each for what never amounted to more than 10 minutes work - honestly never more than that. People from Hollywood want to make my book into a movie, and I am probably going to let them do so, and they will likely pay me a great deal of money for the privilege.
Do I care about this money? I do. Will I keep this money? Very little of it. Within the year I will have given away almost a million dollars to about 100 charities and individuals, benefiting everything from hospice care to an artist who makes sculptures from Burger King bags. And the rest will be going into publishing books through McSweeney's. Would I have been able to publish McSweeney's if I had not worked at Esquire? Probably not. Where is the $6000 from Forbes going? To a guy named Joe Polevy, who wants to write a book about the effects of radiator noise on children in New England.
Now, what if I were keeping all the money? What if I were buying property in St. Kitt's or blew it all on live-in prostitutes? What if, for example, I was, a few nights ago, sitting at a table in SoHo with a bunch of Hollywood slash celebrity acquaintances, one of whom I went to high school with, and one of whom was Puff Daddy? Would that make me a sellout? Would that mean I was a force of evil?
What if a few nights before that I was at the home of Julian Schnabel, at a party featuring Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, and at which Schnabel said we should get together to talk about him possibly directing my movie? And what if I said sure, let's?
Would all that make me a sellout? Would I be uncool? Would it have been more cool to not go to this party, or to not have written that book, or done that interview, or to have refused millions from Hollywood?
The thing is, I really like saying yes. I like new things, projects, plans, getting people together and doing something, trying something, even when it's corny or stupid. I am not good at saying no. And I do not get along with people who say no. When you die, and it really could be this afternoon, under the same bus wheels I'll stick my head if need be, you will not be happy about having said no. You will be kicking your ass about all the no's you've said. No to that opportunity, or no to that trip to Nova Scotia or no to that night out, or no to that project or no to that person who wants to be naked with you but you worry about what your friends will say.
No is for wimps. No is for pussies. No is to live small and embittered, cherishing the opportunities you missed because they might have sent the wrong message.
There is a point in one's life when one cares about selling out and not selling out. One worries whether or not wearing a certain shirt means that they are behind the curve or ahead of it, or that having certain music in one's collection means that they are impressive, or unimpressive.
Thankfully, for some, this all passes. I am here to tell you that I have, a few years ago, found my way out of that thicket of comparison and relentless suspicion and judgment. And it is a nice feeling. Because, in the end, no one will ever give a shit who has kept shit 'real' except the two or three people, sitting in their apartments, bitter and self-devouring, who take it upon themselves to wonder about such things. The keeping real of shit matters to some people, but it does not matter to me. It's fashion, and I don't like fashion, because fashion does not matter.
What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. What matters is that the Flaming Lips's new album is ravishing and I've listened to it a thousand times already, sometimes for days on end, and it enriches me and makes me want to save people. What matters is that it will stand forever, long after any narrow-hearted curmudgeons have forgotten their appearance on goddamn 90210. What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who's up and who's down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say. Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes.
I say yes, and Wayne Coyne says yes, and if that makes us the enemy, then good, good, good. We are evil people because we want to live and do things. We are on the wrong side because we should be home, calculating which move would be the least damaging to our downtown reputations. But I say yes because I am curious. I want to see things. I say yes when my high school friend tells me to come out because he's hanging with Puffy. A real story, that. I say yes when Hollywood says they'll give me enough money to publish a hundred different books, or send twenty kids through college. Saying no is so fucking boring.
And if anyone wants to hurt me for that, or dismiss me for that, for saying yes, I say Oh do it, do it you motherfuckers, finally, finally, finally.
The original writer and the bulk of the discussion participants take a hostile, superior stance towards mass-market pop culture. I'd like to direct y'all's attention towards a bit of writing by Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and editor of McSweeney'sand generally recognized as the hippest, most po-mo dude in the room. He gave an online interview in the Harvard Advocate last year, and the interviewer asked him, in light of his recent exposure in the evil corporate media, what he was doing to "keep shit real." He responded with an articulate, impassioned rant on the stupidity of the question, and of the notion of trying to increase one's own cool by distancing oneself from the "mainstream," "mass-marketed" notion of cool.
Here's the entire interview. It's rather long; I'll follow up w/ a reprint of the relevant section below, if/. will allow...
Everyone keeps asking if a web page author can write a disclaimer forbidding MS smart linking. RTFA, people! From the article:
In addition, Microsoft says, it will provide a free bit of programming code, called a "meta tag," that site owners could use to bar any Smart Tags from appearing on their sites.
Clearly there's a (META NAME="Smart Tags" CONTENT="Block"> , or some such, that Smart Tags will scan for first. (WSJ refers to this as "programming code," but whatever.) This of course is analogous to spammers using an "opt-out" model, assuming you're OK w/ being violated unless you say otherwise. It should be "opt-in" instead, more like (META NAME="Smart Tags" CONTENT="Allow" > , not touching your page unless that's there. But who ever expected MS to be respectful of authors or anybody for that matter?
...it appears that the interviewer seemed very clueless about the "open source movement" so to speak. It seemed to me that she didn't grasp some of the concepts, particularly that Torvalds did this for the love of programming and nothing more.
She also didn't grasp, at least at first, that you can sell free software.
Pardon me, but could you please explain why ANY educated non-programmer should have the high level of awareness of the internecine "movements" within the programmer community that you seem to expect? Terry was no less knowledgeable about this topic than any other intelligent American who happens to be blessed with a career that does not take place entirely in a cube in front of a CRT. When he answered her questions she "grasped" these things soon enough. Linus did a great job overall in introducing concepts like the operating system and the open source development model to the non-technical public. This wasn't even really the goal of the interview; it was to examine an interesting, intelligent celebrity who's just written a popular autobiography (for purposes of the interview, he was "author Linus Torvalds"). Terry interviews people who are on the public radar screen and makes their topic of interest -- whatever it is -- interesting to the audience. I've heard her interview K.C. (of The Sunshine Band), and it made cheesy disco music seem like a compelling form of expression. That's what she's good at. Here she did what she always does: get into a (virtual) studio with someone and get them to expound on stuff that she knows nothing about and the audience doesn't give a flying flip about, and make that topic clear and compelling. Face it, to most people, what could possibly be more boring or more arcane than a computer's OS?
She even asked Torvalds if he was some how regretful that he didn't try to "sell" his OS rather than giving it away.
This is a crucial question, and any reporter who ignored it, especially in the US, would be ignoring the obvious. You've created a technological marvel, why not cash in?
Linus' answer to this was thoughtful and insightful. It boiled down to this:
I want nothing to do with buying and selling.
I'm a programmer. I'll always be able to make money.
Finland is essentially socialist, so whatever happens, I'll never starve.
This last one is especially of note here in the capitalist West. Part of the the "free market" doctrine is a responsibility on everyone to make money for someone all the time. "Productivity" is defined as short-term money-making; work that doesn't make money isn't acknowledged as work. I'm no Marxist & don't necessarily support huge Nordic-style government, but it's a great challenge to our system that such a luminary names his country's welfare state as an inspiration, or rather as having provided the sense of security that let him engage on this huge labor of love.
Well... this one company was government owned till they sold it out to a guy who took the money and ran. so nowe the workers have some complaints about the government's actions. And the reason why they protest andf don't seek a new job is bacause they are owed 6 months wages and they have rights. They have legal rights protecting them from being fired just like that (unlike the US) and that's the demand. I live just across the street where they are camping and I happen to know the story well.
(emphasis added)
Thank you, AC, for expressing it more clearly and concisely than I could have. Workers in other countries need protection like that. Employers need to be accountable. Not subject to arbitrary laws that tie their hands, but accountable.
Anyway, it looks so socialist to demand guaranteed jobs from government...
Pardon me, Mr. or Ms. Burbilog, but if you'll read the blinking article, you'll see that the sqatters aren't "demand[ing] guaranteed jobs from government," they're asking the government to force their former employer to hand over the back pay it owes them, and to punish that US-based employer for (as they see it) screwing the workers by abandoning the Madrid company.
This is one of the problems with this particular global economy, and with the corporation as an economic unit. The corporate structure separates the owners of a business with the operations of that business, and allows for no accountability for corporate actions. The "globalization" that protesters complain about is simply a further separation of work from money, so they're in separate countries, so them that calls the shots don't even need to think about them that does the work.
We in the US need a similarly robust culture of protest against corporate injustice. It existed in the early 20th century, the era of the muckrakers, the Sherman Antitrust Act, and the labor unions (yes, I know unions have gone way off track, but the impetus to form them was real). What we need is a squat-in like in the article, not a sit-in by rich kids in some president's office at an elite ivy-choked institution, but by laid-off workers at a corporate site. Whoo hoo!
Dr. Demento: "I took a fish head out to see a movie, I didn't have to pay to bring it in."
Mr. Gates, forgive me for the off-topic rant on your sig, but I'm sick and tired of people misattributing this masterpiece. The song "Fish Heads" was written and recorded by Barnes & Barnes, and was credited as such on MTV (back when they had interesting content). Dr. Demento merely popularized the song by putting it on his compilation albums, just as he did with Weird Al's early works.
Does anyone else remember this game or should I just check myself into a "home" (as my wife has threatened to do to me recently)?
It did exist, we all loved it (that damned babel fish!), and you can play a java version of it here.
The java port of the HHGG Infocom game is also available here, on the Douglas Adams home page. It's fully functional except that you can't save your game.
The URL is http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava. html.
This tragic news is following fresh from the death of Joey Ramone, who also died at 49 and whose creative work also helped to transform the world in the mid-to-late seventies. It's as though these 2 guys (w/ practically nothing else in common) were part of a cohort of test subjects born in 1952, reaching their brilliance in their late 20s, and dying at 49.
It's reminiscent of all the rock stars who have died at 27: Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain.
Back in early 2000 I was getting paid large sacks of money as a web consultant to a startup company (in someone's attic). I also needed to find a place to live. While I could have afforded rent in the thousands, my gut told me not to bank on the consulting bucks. (And forget about trying to buy in Boston.) So instead I set a frugal budget and found a nice, affordable shared apartment in Brookline, with 3 roommates.
Needless to say, the company's venture capital dried up and with it my consulting gig. Now I'm working as an office temp slave,* but at least I can still pay rent.
* I'd insert a link to http://www.temp24-7.com, but the site seems to be down.
Slashdot Mirror
M$=EE: Agreed.
Linux="Better": But is it really? Is it better for everyone, or just geeks?
It seems established as the OS of choice for those with the knowhow to handle a CLI and to configure a system to their liking. That's present company.
But for people who don't know the difference between an OS and a windowing system, who don't want to learn how to configure a system but rather want to use it right out of the box, who got a computer so they could send e-mail and look at web pages and type business letters and scan pictures of the kids, maybe handle finances, all with as little overhead (of time and brain power) as possible -- these are the bulk of computer users. Can anyone bring me one such person who likes Linux?
I'm a drooling Mac user myself, so I really don't know what I'm talking about. That's why I'm asking and not telling. But this is not a trivial issue -- if you make a technology that is theoretically "superior" from a technical standpoint but don't provide an easy way for people to use it, the job ain't done yet. And Mr. Wigginz is right on -- no one likes being made to feel stupid.
(Congratulations, you've just bought the best car on the market! See all those empty spaces under the hood? You can install any carboretur, radiator, transmission, and catalytic converter you want! The customer's always right! What, you don't have 31337 m3ch4n1x ski11z? Get off the road, luser!)
([And I'll tell you one thing -- ain't no way in hell my mom's gonna go looking on discussion forums for a scanner driver! The blueberry iMac was hard enough for her to learn how to use already.])
However, it was designed ONLY to diagnose neuroses and psychoses, under 50s-era Freudian ideas of pathology. As a result, it has a scale for each postulated type of deviancy, including schizophrenia, psychosis, masculinity/femininity (both genders for both sexes), paranoia, etc. And that's all it does. Essentially it asks, "How schizophrenic ARE you?" Virtually guaranteeing something diagnosable. How a computer can suffer from Freudian neuroses is beyond me. And as a previous poster pointed out, it's clearly culturally biased towards Americans. Yet it's routinely abused as a standard personaliy test, like the Myers-Briggs (a different animal entirely).
(An earlier poster remarked that the MMPI successfully predicted that a test subject had undergone a previous trauma, even though he had tried to hide it. This would be a good example of the test's purpose of diagnosing problems, at which it can be quite effective. But this is different from creating a complete psychological profile.)
As for this Dr. Epstein, the psychologist who administered this bogus test to this imaginary person: he may have a Harvard pedigree, but he's also editor-in-chief of Psychology Today. That's a fluffy pop-psych mag that populates many supermarket checkout lines, and is always quick with captivating new insights as to why men never ask directions. And now he's being discussed on /.. Sheesh.
I've read more detailed, recent reports of Champ sightings than anything from Nessie enthusiasts. They've even figured out his (her?) taxonomic identity and given it a scientific genus (Champtanystropheus). If you go to the lakeside park in Burlington there's a statue commemorating all the sightings. Champ has even been commemorated by Uhaul!
And the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks are gorgeous this time of year. ;-)
Actually, I'm a vegetarian, but I'm not opposed to hunting. I am opposed to factory farming. I say, if you're willing to kill it yourself, bon appetit. At least those animals get to live decent lives before we take them. Not only that, but depending on where you go looking for food, if you're not careful there's a chance a bigger animal might get you. Fair's fair, and if you don't like the rules, don't play. (I don't.)
Are you suggesting that wild cougars take entire species of animals & keep them chained up & fed so that the cougar population can grow fat & lazy & not have to work for food? I don't think you are. But there's a fundamental difference between predation and agriculture.
[Incidentally, as a rule I never preach vegetarianism, acknowledging it as an eccentricity of mine. But you provoked me. 8{)> ]
As for rational discourse, it's a tool that our species has adapted to help ensure survival. Nothing more, nothing less. Boy has it worked! I dig it & wouldn't have it any other way. That's why I'm here. But let's not get too full of ourselves. We are a species, & we do what we do best.
I saw that film on the contemporary !Kung San hunter-gatherer culture in college. Unfortunately, it wasn't particularly accurate: After following the tribe of hunters for days and watching them harasss this poor giraffe, stalking it, poking it with spears until it looked like a pincushion, the Western camera crew shot the beast with a rifle. Then they filmed it falling dramatically, like a mighty oak felled by the logger, as if these noble savages were claiming their quarry.
A minimum-wage worker can walk into a Barne's & Noble with his last $4.99 left (after paying rent and buying groceries for his kids) and walk out with a copy of Platos "The Republic". You will never create a communications medium as radically easy to disseminate as that.
From their FAQ:
So yeah, they're German Mac bigots. Guess it takes all types.
Signal-to-noise ratio -
[snip]
And just who are Juno and NetZero targeting? They are going after people who cannot pony up fifteen bucks a month for legitimate Internet access. Now ask yourself: What value can these people possibly contribute to the Internet at large?
[snip]
Common sense dictates that the majority of this crap is coming from uneducated, lower-class people at the very bottom of the wage scale. Juno and Netzero are dedicated to making sure that these people get Internet access. Well, you can call me elitist, but I call that bullshit.
[Emphasis added.]
One of the problems all along with the Net as a civic tool and instrument of democracy (and we all believe in that, right?) is the fact that for most of its life it's been a playground for wealthy, educated, urban, mostly young, white guys. In the past couple years with the decreasing cost of computers and net access -- and, yes, with the increasing commercialization of the net -- this has been changing. But we still have a long way to go.
What is this perceived danger of bringing into the net more (gasp) working-class people? (or women? nonwhites? people from outside the US? even the developing world?) The danger is that our sacred civic institutions like /. get infiltrated with people of different backgrounds. They might even have opinions that are offensive to our sensibilities. Fortunately, frequently the lower-class outsiders might lack the postgraduate-level writing skills the we the eleet have (duh!) so we can easily dismiss them as lowlifes.
The poster clearly equates thus:
Most of the folks who object to the original elitist troll have said, in essence, "Let the poor benighted heathens come to the Net so we can educate them. Well, maybe they can learn from us (speaking as a degree-holding white boy), but we might wanna open our ears too, maybe we can learn something about the world beyond our CRTs and office parks.
The walls of the country club are coming down brick by brick. Hallelujah.
Yet another reason iCab is my favorite browser.
It has the most sophisticated filtering system I've seen. You can filter cookies using many criteria, including (my favorite) blocking cookies that come from a different domain from the main page. AND you can filter IMAGES by size, w/ options to exclude sizes including 1x1px (this blocks most web bugs) as well as most common advertisement sizes, like the ubiquitous banner. What you get instead is a blank banner-(or whatever-)sized space with an icon of a coffee filter in the corner. Hee!
And speaking as a web designer, the feature doesn't compromise the legitimate use of spacer GIFs.* Page design is preserved, and who cares if the 1-px. GIF is actually loaded or not.
*Yes, I know that with CSS we shouldn't need spacer GIFs. I will rejoice when browser support for CSS is consistent enough for us to rely on them. Meanwhile, though, clients still tend to expect web pages to be as as precisely designed as print, and sometimes you gotta cheat. But that's another discussion.
Glad someone got it. True, Dave gets long-winded, and overly defensive. I wish I'd had time to edit the article more (though Dave would be furious if he found out I had).
But it makes a point I think needs to be made here, which is that mass-consumed culture does not necessarily equal bad culture. Thank you Chris, for pointing out the difference btwn an honest pop musician whose music happens to have commercial appeal (like Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Sting) and a fake pop musician who contrives style for $$$ (like Britney/BonJovi/NKOTB/yadayada). Nick, my apologies for subjecting you to that. Caveat emptor (or reador).
I'm of course biased b/c I totally adore Dave as a writer and he's aufully nice each time I see him on tour. (He puts original artwork on your copies of his books, not just autographs.)
Another point: researching obscure music and spending enough time listening to it to form an educated opinion of your favorite indie artists takes lots of time & resources, commendable tho it is. How many people know the frequency of their local college station? The listings of the local basement nightclub or rave promoters? Same with indie literature, or any other kinda art. Think too of the initiative and time it takes to become a Linux (or other indie OS) geek. Most people get their computers off the shelf, and listen to what they're playing on the radio on the way home, b/c they have priorities other than being on the cutting edge in every area of the artistic and technical world. Can we blame them? No.
Brace yourselves: Here's a long rant against the notion of being superior to mass-produced cool, by author Dave Eggers. Enjoy.
=====+
First, a primer: When I got your questions, I was provoked. You expressed many of the feelings I used to have, when I was in high school and college, about some of the people I admired at the time, people who at some point disappointed me in some way, or made moves I could not understand. So I took a few passages from your questions - those pertaining to or hinting at "selling out" - and I used them as a launching pad for a rant I've wanted to write for a while now, and more so than ever since my own book has become successful. And the rant was timely, because shortly after getting your questions, I was scheduled to speak at Yale, and so, assuming that their minds might be in a similar spot as yours, I read this, the below, to them, in slightly less polished form. The rant is directed to myself, age 20, as much as it is to you, so remember that if you ever want to take much offense.
----
You actually asked me the question: "Are you taking any steps to keep shit real?" I want you always to look back on this time as being a time when those words came out of your mouth.
Now, there was a time when such a question - albeit probably without the colloquial spin - would have originated from my own brain. Since I was thirteen, sitting in my orange-carpeted bedroom in ostensibly cutting-edge Lake Forest, Illinois, subscribing to the Village Voice and reading the earliest issues of Spin, I thought I had my ear to the railroad tracks of avant garde America. (Laurie Anderson, for example, had grown up only miles away!) I was always monitoring, with the most sensitive and well-calibrated apparatus, the degree of selloutitude exemplified by any given artist - musical, visual, theatrical, whatever. I was vigilant and merciless and knew it was my job to be so.
I bought R.E.M.'s first EP, Chronic Town, when it came out and thought I had found God. I loved Murmur, Reckoning, but then watched, with greater and greater dismay, as this obscure little band's audience grew, grew beyond obsessed people like myself, grew to encompass casual fans, people who had heard a song on the radio and picked up Green and listened for the hits. Old people liked them, and stupid people, and my moron neighbor who had sex with truck drivers. I wanted these phony R.E.M.-lovers dead.
But it was the band's fault, too. They played on Letterman. They switched record labels. Even their album covers seemed progressively more commercial. And when everyone I knew began liking them, I stopped. Had they changed, had their commitment to making art with integrity changed? I didn't care, because for me, any sort of popularity had an inverse relationship with what you term the keeping 'real' of 'shit.' When the Smiths became slightly popular they were sellouts. Bob Dylan appeared on MTV and of course was a sellout. Recently, just at dinner tonight, after a huge, sold-out reading by David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell (both sellouts), I was sitting next to an acquaintance, a very smart acquaintance married to the singer-songwriter of a very well-known band. I mentioned that I had seen the Flaming Lips the night before. She rolled her eyes. "Oh I really liked them on 90210," she sneered, assuming that this would put me and the band in our respective places.
However.
Was she aware that The Flaming Lips had composed an album requiring the simultaneous playing of four separate discs, on four separate CD players? Was she aware that the band had once, for a show at Lincoln Center, handed out to audience members something like 100 portable tape players, with 100 different tapes, and had them all played at the same time, creating a symphonic sort of effect, one which completely devastated everyone in attendance? I went on and on to her about the band's accomplishments, their experiments. Was she convinced that they were more than their one appearance with Jason Priestly? She was.
Now, at that concert the night before, Wayne Coyne, the lead singer, had himself addressed this issue, and to great effect. After playing much of their new album, the band paused and he spoke to the audience. I will paraphrase what he said:
"Hi. Well, some people get all bitter when some song of theirs gets popular, and they refuse to play it. But we're not like that. We're happy that people like this song. So here it goes."
Then they played the song. (You know the song.) "She Don't Use Jelly" is the song, and it is a silly song, and it was their most popular song. But to highlight their enthusiasm for playing the song, the band released, from the stage and from the balconies, about 200 balloons. (Some of the balloons, it should be noted, were released by two grown men in bunny suits.) Then while playing the song, Wayne sang with a puppet on his hand, who also sang into the microphone. It was fun. It was good.
But was it a sellout? Probably. By some standards, yes. Can a good band play their hit song? Should we hate them for this? Probably, probably. First 90210, now they go playing the song every stupid night. Everyone knows that 90210 is not cutting edge, and that a cutting edge alternarock band should not appear on such a show. That rule is clearly stated in the obligatory engrained computer-chip sellout manual that we were all given when we hit adolescence.
But this sellout manual serves only the lazy and small. Those who bestow sellouthood upon their former heroes are driven to do so by, first and foremost, the unshakable need to reduce. The average one of us - a taker-in of various and constant media, is absolutely overwhelmed - as he or she should be - with the sheer volume of artistic output in every conceivable medium given to the world every day - it is simply too much to begin to process or comprehend - and so we are forced to try to sort, to reduce. We designate, we label, we diminish, we create hierarchies and categories.
Through largely received wisdom, we rule out Tom Waits's new album because it's the same old same old, and we save $15. U2 has lost it, Radiohead is too popular. Country music is bad, Puff Daddy is bad, the last Wallace book was bad because that one reviewer said so. We decide that TV is bad unless it's the Sopranos. We liked Rick Moody and Jonathan Lethem and Jeffrey Eugenides until they allowed their books to become movies. And on and on. The point is that we do this and to a certain extent we must do this. We must create categories, and to an extent, hierarchies.
But you know what is easiest of all? When we dismiss. Oh how gloriously comforting, to be able to write someone off. Thus, in the overcrowded pantheon of alternarock bands, at a certain juncture, it became necessary for a certain brand of person to write off The Flaming Lips, despite the fact that everyone knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that their music was superb and groundbreaking and real. We could write them off because they shared a few minutes with Jason Priestley and that terrifying Tori Spelling person. Or we could write them off because too many magazines have talked about them. Or because it looked like the bassist was wearing too much gel in his hair.
One less thing to think about. Now, how to kill off the rest of our heroes, to better make room for new ones?
We liked Guided by Voices until they let Ric Ocasek produce their latest album, and everyone knows Ocasek is a sellout, having written those mushy Cars songs in the late 80s, and then - gasp! - produced Weezer's album, and of course Weezer's no good, because that Sweater song was on the radio, right, and dorky teenage girls were singing it and we cannot have that and so Weezer is bad and Ocasek is bad and Guided by Voices are bad, even if Spike Jonze did direct that one Weezer video, and we like Spike Jonze, don't we?
Oh. No. We don't. We don't like him anymore because he's married to Sofia Coppola, and she is not cool. Not cool. So bad in Godfather 3, such nepotism. So let's check off Spike Jonze - leaving room in our brains for who??
It's exhausting.
The only thing worse than this sort of activity is when people, students and teachers alike, run around college campuses calling each other racists and anti-Semites. It's born of boredom, lassitude. Too cowardly to address problems of substance where such problems actually are, we claw at those close to us. We point to our neighbor, in the khakis and sweater, and cry foul. It's ridiculous. We find enemies among our peers because we know them better, and their proximity and familiarity means we don't have to get off the couch to dismantle them.
And now, I am also a sellout. Here are my sins, many of which you may know about already:
First, I was a sellout because Might magazine took ads. Then I was a sellout because our pages were color, and not stapled together at the Kinko's. Then I was a sellout because I went to work for Esquire. Now I'm a sellout because my book has sold many copies. And because I have done many interviews. And because I have let people take my picture. And because my goddamn picture has been in just about every fucking magazine and newspaper printed in America.
And now, as far as McSweeney's is concerned, The Advocate interviewer wants to know if we're losing also our edge, if the magazine is selling out, hitting the mainstream, if we're still committed to publishing unknowns, and pieces killed by other magazines.
And the fact is, I don't give a fuck. When we did the last issue, this was my thought process: I saw a box. So I decided we'd do a box. We were given stories by some of our favorite writers - George Saunders, Rick Moody (who is uncool, uncool!), Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis, others - and so we published them. Did I wonder if people would think we were selling out, that we were not fulfilling the mission they had assumed we had committed ourselves to?
No. I did not. Nor will I ever. We just don't care. We care about doing what we want to do creatively. We want to be interested in it. We want it to challenge us. We want it to be difficult. We want to reinvent the stupid thing every time. Would I ever think, before I did something, of how those with sellout monitors would respond to this or that move? I would not. The second I sense a thought like that trickling into my brain, I will put my head under the tires of a bus.
You want to know how big a sellout I am?
A few months ago I wrote an article for Time magazine and was paid $12,000 for it I am about to write something, 1,000 words, 3 pages or so, for something called Forbes ASAP, and for that I will be paid $6,000 For two years, until five months ago, I was on the payroll of ESPN magazine, as a consultant and sometime contributor. I was paid handsomely for doing very little. Same with my stint at Esquire. One year I spent there, with little to no duties. I wore khakis every day. Another Might editor and I, for almost a year, contributed to Details magazine, under pseudonyms, and were paid $2000 each for what never amounted to more than 10 minutes work - honestly never more than that. People from Hollywood want to make my book into a movie, and I am probably going to let them do so, and they will likely pay me a great deal of money for the privilege.
Do I care about this money? I do. Will I keep this money? Very little of it. Within the year I will have given away almost a million dollars to about 100 charities and individuals, benefiting everything from hospice care to an artist who makes sculptures from Burger King bags. And the rest will be going into publishing books through McSweeney's. Would I have been able to publish McSweeney's if I had not worked at Esquire? Probably not. Where is the $6000 from Forbes going? To a guy named Joe Polevy, who wants to write a book about the effects of radiator noise on children in New England.
Now, what if I were keeping all the money? What if I were buying property in St. Kitt's or blew it all on live-in prostitutes? What if, for example, I was, a few nights ago, sitting at a table in SoHo with a bunch of Hollywood slash celebrity acquaintances, one of whom I went to high school with, and one of whom was Puff Daddy? Would that make me a sellout? Would that mean I was a force of evil?
What if a few nights before that I was at the home of Julian Schnabel, at a party featuring Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, and at which Schnabel said we should get together to talk about him possibly directing my movie? And what if I said sure, let's?
Would all that make me a sellout? Would I be uncool? Would it have been more cool to not go to this party, or to not have written that book, or done that interview, or to have refused millions from Hollywood?
The thing is, I really like saying yes. I like new things, projects, plans, getting people together and doing something, trying something, even when it's corny or stupid. I am not good at saying no. And I do not get along with people who say no. When you die, and it really could be this afternoon, under the same bus wheels I'll stick my head if need be, you will not be happy about having said no. You will be kicking your ass about all the no's you've said. No to that opportunity, or no to that trip to Nova Scotia or no to that night out, or no to that project or no to that person who wants to be naked with you but you worry about what your friends will say.
No is for wimps. No is for pussies. No is to live small and embittered, cherishing the opportunities you missed because they might have sent the wrong message.
There is a point in one's life when one cares about selling out and not selling out. One worries whether or not wearing a certain shirt means that they are behind the curve or ahead of it, or that having certain music in one's collection means that they are impressive, or unimpressive.
Thankfully, for some, this all passes. I am here to tell you that I have, a few years ago, found my way out of that thicket of comparison and relentless suspicion and judgment. And it is a nice feeling. Because, in the end, no one will ever give a shit who has kept shit 'real' except the two or three people, sitting in their apartments, bitter and self-devouring, who take it upon themselves to wonder about such things. The keeping real of shit matters to some people, but it does not matter to me. It's fashion, and I don't like fashion, because fashion does not matter.
What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. What matters is that the Flaming Lips's new album is ravishing and I've listened to it a thousand times already, sometimes for days on end, and it enriches me and makes me want to save people. What matters is that it will stand forever, long after any narrow-hearted curmudgeons have forgotten their appearance on goddamn 90210. What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who's up and who's down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say. Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes.
I say yes, and Wayne Coyne says yes, and if that makes us the enemy, then good, good, good. We are evil people because we want to live and do things. We are on the wrong side because we should be home, calculating which move would be the least damaging to our downtown reputations. But I say yes because I am curious. I want to see things. I say yes when my high school friend tells me to come out because he's hanging with Puffy. A real story, that. I say yes when Hollywood says they'll give me enough money to publish a hundred different books, or send twenty kids through college. Saying no is so fucking boring.
And if anyone wants to hurt me for that, or dismiss me for that, for saying yes, I say Oh do it, do it you motherfuckers, finally, finally, finally.
The original writer and the bulk of the discussion participants take a hostile, superior stance towards mass-market pop culture. I'd like to direct y'all's attention towards a bit of writing by Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and editor of McSweeney'sand generally recognized as the hippest, most po-mo dude in the room. He gave an online interview in the Harvard Advocate last year, and the interviewer asked him, in light of his recent exposure in the evil corporate media, what he was doing to "keep shit real." He responded with an articulate, impassioned rant on the stupidity of the question, and of the notion of trying to increase one's own cool by distancing oneself from the "mainstream," "mass-marketed" notion of cool.
Here's the entire interview. It's rather long; I'll follow up w/ a reprint of the relevant section below, if /. will allow...
Everyone keeps asking if a web page author can write a disclaimer forbidding MS smart linking. RTFA, people! From the article:
Clearly there's a (META NAME="Smart Tags" CONTENT="Block"> , or some such, that Smart Tags will scan for first. (WSJ refers to this as "programming code," but whatever.) This of course is analogous to spammers using an "opt-out" model, assuming you're OK w/ being violated unless you say otherwise. It should be "opt-in" instead, more like (META NAME="Smart Tags" CONTENT="Allow" > , not touching your page unless that's there. But who ever expected MS to be respectful of authors or anybody for that matter?
Pardon me, but could you please explain why ANY educated non-programmer should have the high level of awareness of the internecine "movements" within the programmer community that you seem to expect? Terry was no less knowledgeable about this topic than any other intelligent American who happens to be blessed with a career that does not take place entirely in a cube in front of a CRT. When he answered her questions she "grasped" these things soon enough. Linus did a great job overall in introducing concepts like the operating system and the open source development model to the non-technical public. This wasn't even really the goal of the interview; it was to examine an interesting, intelligent celebrity who's just written a popular autobiography (for purposes of the interview, he was "author Linus Torvalds"). Terry interviews people who are on the public radar screen and makes their topic of interest -- whatever it is -- interesting to the audience. I've heard her interview K.C. (of The Sunshine Band), and it made cheesy disco music seem like a compelling form of expression. That's what she's good at. Here she did what she always does: get into a (virtual) studio with someone and get them to expound on stuff that she knows nothing about and the audience doesn't give a flying flip about, and make that topic clear and compelling. Face it, to most people, what could possibly be more boring or more arcane than a computer's OS?
This is a crucial question, and any reporter who ignored it, especially in the US, would be ignoring the obvious. You've created a technological marvel, why not cash in?
Linus' answer to this was thoughtful and insightful. It boiled down to this:
This last one is especially of note here in the capitalist West. Part of the the "free market" doctrine is a responsibility on everyone to make money for someone all the time. "Productivity" is defined as short-term money-making; work that doesn't make money isn't acknowledged as work. I'm no Marxist & don't necessarily support huge Nordic-style government, but it's a great challenge to our system that such a luminary names his country's welfare state as an inspiration, or rather as having provided the sense of security that let him engage on this huge labor of love.
Me, I can't wait for Linus to be interviewed by Christopher Lydon!
Thank you, AC, for expressing it more clearly and concisely than I could have. Workers in other countries need protection like that. Employers need to be accountable. Not subject to arbitrary laws that tie their hands, but accountable.
Pardon me, Mr. or Ms. Burbilog, but if you'll read the blinking article, you'll see that the sqatters aren't "demand[ing] guaranteed jobs from government," they're asking the government to force their former employer to hand over the back pay it owes them, and to punish that US-based employer for (as they see it) screwing the workers by abandoning the Madrid company.
This is one of the problems with this particular global economy, and with the corporation as an economic unit. The corporate structure separates the owners of a business with the operations of that business, and allows for no accountability for corporate actions. The "globalization" that protesters complain about is simply a further separation of work from money, so they're in separate countries, so them that calls the shots don't even need to think about them that does the work.
We in the US need a similarly robust culture of protest against corporate injustice. It existed in the early 20th century, the era of the muckrakers, the Sherman Antitrust Act, and the labor unions (yes, I know unions have gone way off track, but the impetus to form them was real). What we need is a squat-in like in the article, not a sit-in by rich kids in some president's office at an elite ivy-choked institution, but by laid-off workers at a corporate site. Whoo hoo!
Mr. Gates, forgive me for the off-topic rant on your sig, but I'm sick and tired of people misattributing this masterpiece. The song "Fish Heads" was written and recorded by Barnes & Barnes, and was credited as such on MTV (back when they had interesting content). Dr. Demento merely popularized the song by putting it on his compilation albums, just as he did with Weird Al's early works.
Back to your regularly scheduled discussion. ;{)>
The java port of the HHGG Infocom game is also available here, on the Douglas Adams home page. It's fully functional except that you can't save your game.
The URL is http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava. html.
It's reminiscent of all the rock stars who have died at 27: Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain.
Needless to say, the company's venture capital dried up and with it my consulting gig. Now I'm working as an office temp slave,* but at least I can still pay rent.