"AOL/TimeWarner dumped a lot of money into marketing Netscape 6/7, to no real avail.
Contrary to your claim, most technical/power users are fully aware of Netscape 7 at least, and aren't really all that impressed."
That's because it was slow, bloated, and generally sucked. Nobody around here is touting Netscape 7 either. If you can't get the 'informed' people to use it, then there's something horribly wrong with it, now isn't there?
"So why was that left out? Reading the summary I just thought that these people were being nice guys to Microsoft, and not that Microsoft actually addressed and fixed many issues with IE.
One sided journalism?"
Ah, new to Slashdot?
This is exactly the reason that so many 'Microsoft Apologists', as they're affectionately called here, argue with popular opinion. Simply put, you really have to RTFA with stories about MS because they ALWAYS have the worst possible spin here. As a result, people come out and say "Microsoft isn't really assymilating the world here..." and nobody else wants to believe that so they are ridiculed.
It'd be nice if Slashdot's MS reporting was a little more balanced. The way it is now, seriously, it's like watching Jerry Springer sometimes.
"while still remaining far and away the dominant product in its category in spite of superior software being readily available, that's a sign that the ill effects of monopoly power are at play."
No, it's a sign that Mozilla needs a PR firm.
Face facts: Lots of stuff that has been popular over has had a superior alternative. Newton/Palm. GameBoy/GameGear/Lynx/Nomad. Beta/VHS. USB/Firewire. Etc. You don't need a monopoly for that situation to be created.
Now, in this case, we do have a monopoly that puts IE in front of the users. Worse, IE does the job quite well. If you asked the average user out there what could be done to make IE better, the answer would not be "Tabbed browsing!". Why? Because they've never heard of that!
Cripes people. There are no commercials on TV about Mozilla or Opera. There are very few (if any) hints to Mozilla's existence on the mainstream news. You have to visit Slashdot to be blasted with Mo's zealotry. So tell me, how's anybody even supposed to know it exists?
Spare us the MS blame game. There are things that competing browsers can do that they simply aren't. When those avenues are exhausted, you can draw one of two conclusions: 1.) Microsoft has an impenetrable monopoly on the browser market. or 2.) The market has decided they like IE better. In the first case, you can bitch and moan. In the second case you can improve Mozilla.
"I'm sorry, you'll have to use proper english if you want me to understand."
What's the matter? Not strong minded enough to interpret a simple sentence?
"Yes, exactly like stop signs. Road safety is adversely affected by streetside advertising because it distracts the attention away from the road ahead."
I like how you try to imply that stop signs cause accidents. You pretty much shot yourself in the foot with that argument.
Your link there is mildly interesting, though I have to ask: is your concern about advertising in a racing game that people will kill themselves? Heh.
Though billboards may have been blamed for accidents, it doesn't necessarily mean they should be removed. Toned down a little? Sure. Whatever. The problem is that drivers have distractions all the time not related to advertising. Taking these down will not result in a decrease in vehicular fatality. "Uh... I was distracted by that waving tree over there, I'm not really a stupid driver!"
"What you know about me is approximately nothing."
Yes, that is true, but I stand by my hypocrite statement. Afterall, you know zip about me, but you still say this: "As I said, most advertised products hold *no* interest for me whatsoever." What makes you think I'm the opposite of you? What makes you think anybody is?
"Why should I 'give it a rest'?"
Simply put, you are overreacting. I'm not convinced you've looked at both sides of an issue. I think you read a story about advertisements and generated purpose in your life to work against them.
"What is my incentive to keep quiet on a subject that is having a negative impact on my life and the people around me. Does the passive observer feel threatened?"
Oh no, I don't feel threatened. I feel that you're an idiot. Sorry I didn't use a more tactful term there, but I felt you needed for me to be frank. There's a whole layer of common sense that you assume nobody has. As long as you assume everybody is just plain stupid, then you are not working from a useful point of view. Threatened? I think not.
"That's as maybe. Calling someone paranoid is not a valid rebuttal."
Ordinarily I'd agree with you, but in this case I'd grant an exception simply for your dim view of human nature. If advertising worked like you imagine, we would be living in a zombiesque world not unlike what was depicted in Apple's 1984 commercial.
"Sound like Yoda is something I do not." -- I rest my case.
"You really do sound threatened. Why is that?"
I think you need to take another reading on what I sound like.
"Ridicule is the first recourse of the weak minded."
Said the guy who got burned.
"Street advertising steals your attention and imprints itself on your brain."
You mean like stop signs?
"The one who says he is 'unaffected' is the one who is the lost sheep."
Didn't say I was unaffected, I said lighten up. It isn't a bad thing when an advertisement attracts your awareness of something you were already interested in. To assume that it is dangerous is ridiculous.
"If it didn't affect the weak it wouldn't work."
Give it a rest, hyporcrite. We all know you have responded to an advertisement recently. Either you're weak minded, you are simply wrong.
"The passive observer is a collaborator."
Truely weak minded people see danger where there is none. Done trying to sound like Yoda?
Try as we might to filter it out of the web and tv what are you going to do, not go outside!
" YOU WILL CONSUME "
Lighten up, dude. It means revenue is being generated for the game. The nice side effect of that is if you like the game company, they have a bonus chance of sticking around. (Yeah, I know, it's Sega. I'm thinking in general here.)
Besides, whoopee shit if there's advertising in the game. Gee, imagine driving by a billboard with a corporate logo on it as opposed to driving by a billboard with some made up logo, thus reminding you that you're playing a game. It's kind of like watching a movie where the main character is drinking COLA as opposed to Coke. It's startling, thus diverting from your entertainment.
"Why would I pay $1 for what I can get for free three clicks away?"
Tell that to Apple's customers.
I'm sorry, but I've never been a big fan of this argument. People don't just pay for goods, they pay for services. Coffee is free where I work, but many of my coworkers still hike a couple of blocks to go to Starbucks. Why would they do that? They're engineers. They know that the coffee is free! So why do they do it? Because it tastes better! Starbucks is competing with free coffee where I work and winning.
So why would somebody pay for music when they can get it free from Kazaa?
1.) Availability on Kazaa is a variable. Availability on a web-based service is constant.
2.) Mp3s from a website will come down a good deal quicker.
3.) The user wouldn't need to download a bunch of different songs in order to make sure one of them came through in a reasonable amount of time.
Right now, I'm paying $10 a month for Listen.com's Rhapsody service. I have unlimited access to their 300,000+ song library. They have a nice search engine that makes it possible to find new stuff. When I want to hear a song, I just click it and within a few seconds it starts playing. Boom, I have the whole album right there. I don't get to keep the music, I have to stay subscribed to listen, but I'm paying less than the cost of one album a month for it. I don't use Kazaa anymore. It's not everything to everybody, but it definitely competes with 'free'.
You're right in the sense that the RIAA can't compete with Kazaa as long as they don't enter the digital arena. I completely 100% agree with you there. However, the view that they can't compete with it is short-sighted. There are plenty of examples of competing with free.
I am. When I started with PCs back in the 286 days, I had to play with jumpers, it was hard to get support when I had problems, I had to have just the right hardware that most games could play, and I could do only one thing at a time. Today, jumpers are pretty much gone except for 1-time adjustments. Technical Support is as close as Google Groups. Hardware compatibility with games is much broader than it was in the olden days.
On top of all that, problems with my computer don't seem catastrophic. I have plenty of hard drive space, so I'm not constantly downloading to floppies. Hard drive failure isn't such a BFD because I have a CD/DVD burner. Plus, I can always go to a friend's computer as now they are virtually in every home.
I think the biggest difference between then and now is that I actually feel like I've got more than enough to do what I want to do.
... then they should make video for the PVP available for sale. Otherwise, people are going to turn to P2P etc to get stuff. I wish these guys would show some sense. You don't create demand and then not fill it. Apple knew this, hence, iTunes.
Not every download of an MP3 is copyright infringment. It's doubtful the RIAA will make any distinction.
Frankly, I don't see why they should make people pay for a service they're not providing, especially when they don't know why somebody is downloading an MP3.
"Well, I'm not whining first of all. I'm providing a service to people who want it (which is obviously not you)... Whenever someone posts one of these, which many people find helpful, people seem to complain about them. "
You're right. I shouldn't have jumped you about it. I'm sorry.
I listen to Tom Martino in the evening. His website is www.troubleshooter.com. You can listen to it streaming at www.1190kex.com from.. oh I think it's 7pm pacific to 11pm. (I'm doing this from memory, sorry if I'm in error.) Basically, it's a nation-wide radio show devoted to helping the little guy. It's an interesting show because when a company does something wrong, this show works to right the wrong.
Tom Martino *hates* fax spam. So he had a website set up dedicated to busting fax spam. Basically, you send this site the fax, and they pursue it for you. It's www.faxwars.com.
"Any "solution" that autoreplies to email based on who it purports to be from is broken and needs to be fixed."
If I were sending out a bunch of messages, I'd agree with you. But I'm not.
" Sending autoreplies to spam just causes somebody's legitimate inbox to fill with garbage whenever the spammers use that innocent party's address in their spam."
BzzT sorry.
1.) Outlook 2000 only sends one message to a recipient per session.
2.) The message that is sent back is pretty clear: Somebody sent me an email, you cant reach me there, email this other address instead.
3.) If anybody does get that message, they'll see it, and they'll be informed that they have been spoofed. In the event that happens, they can take appropriate steps. Granted, there's not a whole lot they can do, at least they can deal with other hatemail they'll eventually get.
So no, it's not 'just filling an innocent party's address with spam'.
"Also, NYTimes doesn't seem to care; indeed, they set up a system to facilitate it."
Fair point.
" It's way easier to click the google cache inevitably posted"
Why? First you have to go into the comments section, then you have to scroll down until you find it. Or, you could register once, get cookied, and never worry about it again.
" I'm not giving away information for marketing purposes."
As a general practice, I agree with you. In this case, it's so benign. You don't even need to send them a valid email address or honest information. I've never recieved spam from them (I used a specially created address just for them). Even if they did, as I said, you don't need to send them a new address.
If we were talking about any given site, I'd 100% agree with you. However, NYTimes stories make it here ALL the time. Every single time there are people who bitch about it and waste time finding away around the registration. I'm sorry, but it's just so silly to worry about this.
Here, just log in using this account I created for you (and anybody else who feels that registerring is way too hard)
user: toowhiney pass: slashdot
Yes, I'm serious, that'll work. Log in, then get cookied, then quit whining.
"Oppositively, you could play Mario Kart on the SAME TV, thereby actually staying with your girlfriend in the same room, and in close proximity, even though you are both looking fixatedly at a TV"
I like how everybody gives me girlfriend advice here. I mentioned going to a movie by myself once, and I got several why didn't you take her?!?!! messages. HELLO, women don't like Star Trek!
Anyhoo, if we're playing a game, we're interacting. Doesn't matter if we're in the same room or not. The reason that we'd want to split it up on two TVs is that we want to be able to play the game without an unfair advantage. Now it's not lal that necessary in Mario Kart, but it'd be a nicety. Try to imagine Goldeneye that way. Even if we were on different TVs in the same room, there's still the audio element. I useta do that with a coworker in our office. We used to spend late nights in our cubes playing Age of Empires, using the speakerphones to talk to each other. I used to piss him off because his phone was close to his speakers, so I could hear where he was on the map. With that knowledge, I'd stage suprise attacks. heh.
In any case, yeah I suppose would play in the same room like we always do. If that takes away from the fun of the game, sitting next to each other doing it isn't going to save it.
"That sounds way too complicated, when all you need is SpamBayes."
Nar, it's not that complicated. It took me a little bit (15-20 minutes maybe?) to build my initial contact list. After that, setting up the rules was simple. I guess you could say that setting up the email forwarders is 'complicated' as I have to go a couple of places on the site to get to that. However, I could just set up a global address and add new contacts to the rule.
Is it more complex than your suggestion (which I bookmarked and will look at, I don't want you to feel like I'm shrugging you off. I'm curious about what you linked to here.), then the answer is a mild yes. No argument there. Though it wouldn't be too hard to devise an interface for what I've done.
For the record, I didn't just do this for spam filtering, I wanted control over my messages.
Slashdot Mirror
"Ummm, Netscape 7 is Mozilla."
Ummm, no, it's not. Nobody's touting Netscape 7 zealousy here.
"AOL/TimeWarner dumped a lot of money into marketing Netscape 6/7, to no real avail.
Contrary to your claim, most technical/power users are fully aware of Netscape 7 at least, and aren't really all that impressed."
That's because it was slow, bloated, and generally sucked. Nobody around here is touting Netscape 7 either. If you can't get the 'informed' people to use it, then there's something horribly wrong with it, now isn't there?
"So why was that left out? Reading the summary I just thought that these people were being nice guys to Microsoft, and not that Microsoft actually addressed and fixed many issues with IE.
One sided journalism?"
Ah, new to Slashdot?
This is exactly the reason that so many 'Microsoft Apologists', as they're affectionately called here, argue with popular opinion. Simply put, you really have to RTFA with stories about MS because they ALWAYS have the worst possible spin here. As a result, people come out and say "Microsoft isn't really assymilating the world here..." and nobody else wants to believe that so they are ridiculed.
It'd be nice if Slashdot's MS reporting was a little more balanced. The way it is now, seriously, it's like watching Jerry Springer sometimes.
"while still remaining far and away the dominant product in its category in spite of superior software being readily available, that's a sign that the ill effects of monopoly power are at play."
No, it's a sign that Mozilla needs a PR firm.
Face facts: Lots of stuff that has been popular over has had a superior alternative. Newton/Palm. GameBoy/GameGear/Lynx/Nomad. Beta/VHS. USB/Firewire. Etc. You don't need a monopoly for that situation to be created.
Now, in this case, we do have a monopoly that puts IE in front of the users. Worse, IE does the job quite well. If you asked the average user out there what could be done to make IE better, the answer would not be "Tabbed browsing!". Why? Because they've never heard of that!
Cripes people. There are no commercials on TV about Mozilla or Opera. There are very few (if any) hints to Mozilla's existence on the mainstream news. You have to visit Slashdot to be blasted with Mo's zealotry. So tell me, how's anybody even supposed to know it exists?
Spare us the MS blame game. There are things that competing browsers can do that they simply aren't. When those avenues are exhausted, you can draw one of two conclusions: 1.) Microsoft has an impenetrable monopoly on the browser market. or 2.) The market has decided they like IE better. In the first case, you can bitch and moan. In the second case you can improve Mozilla.
"I'm sorry, you'll have to use proper english if you want me to understand."
What's the matter? Not strong minded enough to interpret a simple sentence?
"Yes, exactly like stop signs. Road safety is adversely affected by streetside advertising because it distracts the attention away from the road ahead."
I like how you try to imply that stop signs cause accidents. You pretty much shot yourself in the foot with that argument.
Your link there is mildly interesting, though I have to ask: is your concern about advertising in a racing game that people will kill themselves? Heh.
Though billboards may have been blamed for accidents, it doesn't necessarily mean they should be removed. Toned down a little? Sure. Whatever. The problem is that drivers have distractions all the time not related to advertising. Taking these down will not result in a decrease in vehicular fatality. "Uh... I was distracted by that waving tree over there, I'm not really a stupid driver!"
"What you know about me is approximately nothing."
Yes, that is true, but I stand by my hypocrite statement. Afterall, you know zip about me, but you still say this: "As I said, most advertised products hold *no* interest for me whatsoever." What makes you think I'm the opposite of you? What makes you think anybody is?
"Why should I 'give it a rest'?"
Simply put, you are overreacting. I'm not convinced you've looked at both sides of an issue. I think you read a story about advertisements and generated purpose in your life to work against them.
"What is my incentive to keep quiet on a subject that is having a negative impact on my life and the people around me. Does the passive observer feel threatened?"
Oh no, I don't feel threatened. I feel that you're an idiot. Sorry I didn't use a more tactful term there, but I felt you needed for me to be frank. There's a whole layer of common sense that you assume nobody has. As long as you assume everybody is just plain stupid, then you are not working from a useful point of view. Threatened? I think not.
"That's as maybe. Calling someone paranoid is not a valid rebuttal."
Ordinarily I'd agree with you, but in this case I'd grant an exception simply for your dim view of human nature. If advertising worked like you imagine, we would be living in a zombiesque world not unlike what was depicted in Apple's 1984 commercial.
"Sound like Yoda is something I do not." -- I rest my case.
"You really do sound threatened. Why is that?"
I think you need to take another reading on what I sound like.
"Ridicule is the first recourse of the weak minded."
Said the guy who got burned.
"Street advertising steals your attention and imprints itself on your brain."
You mean like stop signs?
"The one who says he is 'unaffected' is the one who is the lost sheep."
Didn't say I was unaffected, I said lighten up. It isn't a bad thing when an advertisement attracts your awareness of something you were already interested in. To assume that it is dangerous is ridiculous.
"If it didn't affect the weak it wouldn't work."
Give it a rest, hyporcrite. We all know you have responded to an advertisement recently. Either you're weak minded, you are simply wrong.
"The passive observer is a collaborator."
Truely weak minded people see danger where there is none. Done trying to sound like Yoda?
"Coders should spend more time coding, instead of trying to rush out the game for Christmas/Easter/Yom Kippur/Whatever."
The coders aren't the problem, it's the glut of racing games available for any given system.
Who's really affected here: The guy who says "Lighten up!" or the gu who says "Advertising hoarding is soul destroying"?
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to hear you call Coast to Coast and tell Art Bell about your revelation here.
"the game even shows track-side advertising
Try as we might to filter it out of the web and tv what are you going to do, not go outside!
" YOU WILL CONSUME "
Lighten up, dude. It means revenue is being generated for the game. The nice side effect of that is if you like the game company, they have a bonus chance of sticking around. (Yeah, I know, it's Sega. I'm thinking in general here.)
Besides, whoopee shit if there's advertising in the game. Gee, imagine driving by a billboard with a corporate logo on it as opposed to driving by a billboard with some made up logo, thus reminding you that you're playing a game. It's kind of like watching a movie where the main character is drinking COLA as opposed to Coke. It's startling, thus diverting from your entertainment.
Lighten up.
New to english? He means that you can pick it up and play it instead of reading a lengthy manual.
... but one of my earlier sigs was noticed.
"I hate Linux because it made me type man mount."
"Whatcha doin?
I'm appealin!
That's a minority view."
"Why would I pay $1 for what I can get for free three clicks away?"
Tell that to Apple's customers.
I'm sorry, but I've never been a big fan of this argument. People don't just pay for goods, they pay for services. Coffee is free where I work, but many of my coworkers still hike a couple of blocks to go to Starbucks. Why would they do that? They're engineers. They know that the coffee is free! So why do they do it? Because it tastes better! Starbucks is competing with free coffee where I work and winning.
So why would somebody pay for music when they can get it free from Kazaa?
1.) Availability on Kazaa is a variable. Availability on a web-based service is constant.
2.) Mp3s from a website will come down a good deal quicker.
3.) The user wouldn't need to download a bunch of different songs in order to make sure one of them came through in a reasonable amount of time.
Right now, I'm paying $10 a month for Listen.com's Rhapsody service. I have unlimited access to their 300,000+ song library. They have a nice search engine that makes it possible to find new stuff. When I want to hear a song, I just click it and within a few seconds it starts playing. Boom, I have the whole album right there. I don't get to keep the music, I have to stay subscribed to listen, but I'm paying less than the cost of one album a month for it. I don't use Kazaa anymore. It's not everything to everybody, but it definitely competes with 'free'.
You're right in the sense that the RIAA can't compete with Kazaa as long as they don't enter the digital arena. I completely 100% agree with you there. However, the view that they can't compete with it is short-sighted. There are plenty of examples of competing with free.
" Are we better off today than in the past?"
I am. When I started with PCs back in the 286 days, I had to play with jumpers, it was hard to get support when I had problems, I had to have just the right hardware that most games could play, and I could do only one thing at a time. Today, jumpers are pretty much gone except for 1-time adjustments. Technical Support is as close as Google Groups. Hardware compatibility with games is much broader than it was in the olden days.
On top of all that, problems with my computer don't seem catastrophic. I have plenty of hard drive space, so I'm not constantly downloading to floppies. Hard drive failure isn't such a BFD because I have a CD/DVD burner. Plus, I can always go to a friend's computer as now they are virtually in every home.
I think the biggest difference between then and now is that I actually feel like I've got more than enough to do what I want to do.
"You mean like a laptop?"
You must have really big pockets.
... then they should make video for the PVP available for sale. Otherwise, people are going to turn to P2P etc to get stuff. I wish these guys would show some sense. You don't create demand and then not fill it. Apple knew this, hence, iTunes.
Not every download of an MP3 is copyright infringment. It's doubtful the RIAA will make any distinction.
Frankly, I don't see why they should make people pay for a service they're not providing, especially when they don't know why somebody is downloading an MP3.
"You need someone to monitor Windows machines and make sure they stay up. "
Not for the servers, no.
"You need to reformat every 6-12 months. "
Not for the servers, no.
"You need to constantly defrag the hard disk."
Not for the servers, no.
Can't really say I had to worry about any of those on the workstations either.
"NG's posts really bother me, but I'm too stupid to use the foe feature!"
As if I don't know who you are, heh.
"Well, I'm not whining first of all. I'm providing a service to people who want it (which is obviously not you) ... Whenever someone posts one of these, which many people find helpful, people seem to complain about them. "
You're right. I shouldn't have jumped you about it. I'm sorry.
I listen to Tom Martino in the evening. His website is www.troubleshooter.com. You can listen to it streaming at www.1190kex.com from.. oh I think it's 7pm pacific to 11pm. (I'm doing this from memory, sorry if I'm in error.) Basically, it's a nation-wide radio show devoted to helping the little guy. It's an interesting show because when a company does something wrong, this show works to right the wrong.
Tom Martino *hates* fax spam. So he had a website set up dedicated to busting fax spam. Basically, you send this site the fax, and they pursue it for you. It's www.faxwars.com.
"Any "solution" that autoreplies to email based on who it purports to be from is broken and needs to be fixed."
If I were sending out a bunch of messages, I'd agree with you. But I'm not.
" Sending autoreplies to spam just causes somebody's legitimate inbox to fill with garbage whenever the spammers use that innocent party's address in their spam."
BzzT sorry.
1.) Outlook 2000 only sends one message to a recipient per session.
2.) The message that is sent back is pretty clear: Somebody sent me an email, you cant reach me there, email this other address instead.
3.) If anybody does get that message, they'll see it, and they'll be informed that they have been spoofed. In the event that happens, they can take appropriate steps. Granted, there's not a whole lot they can do, at least they can deal with other hatemail they'll eventually get.
So no, it's not 'just filling an innocent party's address with spam'.
"I can't post to Slashdot without registering."
Yeah you can, you post anonymously.
"Also, NYTimes doesn't seem to care; indeed, they set up a system to facilitate it."
Fair point.
" It's way easier to click the google cache inevitably posted"
Why? First you have to go into the comments section, then you have to scroll down until you find it. Or, you could register once, get cookied, and never worry about it again.
" I'm not giving away information for marketing purposes."
As a general practice, I agree with you. In this case, it's so benign. You don't even need to send them a valid email address or honest information. I've never recieved spam from them (I used a specially created address just for them). Even if they did, as I said, you don't need to send them a new address.
If we were talking about any given site, I'd 100% agree with you. However, NYTimes stories make it here ALL the time. Every single time there are people who bitch about it and waste time finding away around the registration. I'm sorry, but it's just so silly to worry about this.
Here, just log in using this account I created for you (and anybody else who feels that registerring is way too hard)
user: toowhiney
pass: slashdot
Yes, I'm serious, that'll work. Log in, then get cookied, then quit whining.
"Oppositively, you could play Mario Kart on the SAME TV, thereby actually staying with your girlfriend in the same room, and in close proximity, even though you are both looking fixatedly at a TV"
I like how everybody gives me girlfriend advice here. I mentioned going to a movie by myself once, and I got several why didn't you take her?!?!! messages. HELLO, women don't like Star Trek!
Anyhoo, if we're playing a game, we're interacting. Doesn't matter if we're in the same room or not. The reason that we'd want to split it up on two TVs is that we want to be able to play the game without an unfair advantage. Now it's not lal that necessary in Mario Kart, but it'd be a nicety. Try to imagine Goldeneye that way. Even if we were on different TVs in the same room, there's still the audio element. I useta do that with a coworker in our office. We used to spend late nights in our cubes playing Age of Empires, using the speakerphones to talk to each other. I used to piss him off because his phone was close to his speakers, so I could hear where he was on the map. With that knowledge, I'd stage suprise attacks. heh.
In any case, yeah I suppose would play in the same room like we always do. If that takes away from the fun of the game, sitting next to each other doing it isn't going to save it.
"That sounds way too complicated, when all you need is SpamBayes."
Nar, it's not that complicated. It took me a little bit (15-20 minutes maybe?) to build my initial contact list. After that, setting up the rules was simple. I guess you could say that setting up the email forwarders is 'complicated' as I have to go a couple of places on the site to get to that. However, I could just set up a global address and add new contacts to the rule.
Is it more complex than your suggestion (which I bookmarked and will look at, I don't want you to feel like I'm shrugging you off. I'm curious about what you linked to here.), then the answer is a mild yes. No argument there. Though it wouldn't be too hard to devise an interface for what I've done.
For the record, I didn't just do this for spam filtering, I wanted control over my messages.