Well, it appears you're happy with your fate. So I'm happy for you, too, apart from the fact that your servility before wealth also consigns millions of others to that fate. And unlike you, they don't deserve it. If you want to vote for people who grind you under their thumb, that's your business. What a shame that the nation and the planet must suffer for your masochism.
To put it bluntly: shag carpeting that grows from the top of your case, making your computer look like Gene Shalit.
Apple's aesthetic, in other words, is light years ahead of American taste. (Or maybe behind; depends on your view of shag, doesn't it.) If it were any company but Apple, I think the color-skin computer case would be a huge hit and turn out to be one of the bridge designs that transform how the post-beige box PC looks.
But Apple just doesn't know how to wallow. Aesthetically, the PC of tomorrow is likely to embody the mass tastes of today - Pottery Barn, JC Penny's, Martha Stewart, mini-vans. Whoever finds the way to cram all those crap design references into a new form for the computer will singlehandedly revive the PC industry.
So here's my modest proposal. Along with making its own trippy cases, Apple's best bet is to make a fortune licensing its tech to the Gateways and Dells of this world. Who, of course, will know what must be done - they'll promptly deploy it in cowskin patterns, Old Glory (c) waving flags, NFL team logos, photo-realistic editions featuring famous Playmates or several splendid views of the chiseled jawline of Donald Rumsfeld. The mass market can buy this stuff until it comes out of their ears, and the licensing fees can keep Apple alive.;-)
I have often wanted just a small built in light for my keyboard on my notebook computer so I could see the keyboard with the roomlights off and not be blinded by the screens light.
...try a USB snake light from Kensington. Works very well.
Imagine strangers who would read to you from William Carlos Williams, offer you a snow cone or a Margarita. Imagine folk costumed in everything and nothing imaginable.
Now, down to business: what were you freakin' thinking when you voted for George W. Bush?
Did you imagine that the fat cats whom he serves wanted you to remain in full employment when there were workers willing, nay, eager to take your jobs for much less? Did you imagine that the terrible exploitation that so long has enriched the wealthy in this country would not voraciously make a meal of you, too? Did you not see the vast numbers of foreign workers being treated like slave labor, or were you too distracted by affluence and comfort to notice?
If you have learned your lesson, then stop voting for politicians who exclusively serve the rich. Your politics has become quite expensive for you.
...in which the extent of your economic misery is easily quantifiable by using a set of factors, including:
1) Your social class
2) The impact your downsizing is likely to have upon the stock price
3) How cheaply you can be replaced, or, conversely, how docile you remain in the face of doing the replaced workers' job(s) for your same or lower pay
And coming soon to castes who have imagined only minorities and the poor have to "volunteer" for our glorious armies:
4) Your suitability to serve in Bush's wars
As a footnote, and out of fairness, let me concede that Bush is far from wholly responsible - our present plight is due to Clintonian/Friedmanesque "market economics," of course (for more on which see the brilliant and quite amusing "One Market Under God" by Thomas Frank). Bush is merely presiding over an accelerated form of the illness, blindly making matters worse with massive tax cuts for the rich, massive military spending, and massive collusion with corporate crooks. That he's done so with the help of Democrats should not be forgotten...
I haven't used anything since Napster. So, after following a link in this thread, I was somewhat shocked to read the following on Acquisition's boards:
I am having some trouble in using aquisition, i select the files i wish to download and say i select 10 files to download, i will rarely everget any of them downloading they virtually always say waiting any help would be appreciated.
(And the reply...)
This is how Gnutella works. On a good day, you might successfully download one out of every 100 files attempted. On a good day.
Be patient, make sure you are connected to lots of hosts sharing large numbers of files, and only attempt downloads from quality (3-star) hosts.
Accurate? Exaggerrated? Is the post-Napster landscape this hit-and-miss?
Also, isn't it the case that P2P is much monitored by the entertainment industry these days, or have the news media been presenting a false picture of its level of intrusion/intimidation?
Hardly "off topic." Very nice point, in fact. The masses do go where they told to go as consumers, and assuredly that is into categories: this item is for gaming, this one for business, etc. Such category fondness is one reason much-ballyhooed "convergence" hasn't yet taken place.
And don't underestimate PC phobia. Countless users are simply intimidated by PCs and find it terribly hard to conceive of relaxing in their presence with a game more sophisticated than Solitaire. Others who aren't intimidated bear the scars of a long dysfunctional association with Microsoft. The console overcomes such fear and distaste, providing a device to which computerphobes can relate to with a minimum of concern.
There are no Q applications yet as that is yet to be developed but we will have a transition phase so applications can time gain access the more advanced Q functions as they are developed then once Q is ready complete switch completely over.
Sure, be skeptical. But not just about the industry stooges who plant "reviews." That's sneaky, of course, and terribly dishonest and certainly undermines what is otherwise a paradise of objectivity, etc. etc.
No, I'd be skeptical of the ordinary people writing legitimate reviews, too. It doesn't take long reading a site such as Epinions.com to realize what an act of self-definition shopping is for Americans. Portraying satisfactions deeper than any porn star could deliver, the reviews are often windows into a banality so advanced that you wonder what these people did before the Net waited to record their deeds. Then you realize: they were cruelly forced to shop in a cage of silence, longing for the day when they could sing great songs about their trips to the cash register.
Yeah, I like a little advice on purchases, too. So my approach is this. Ignore all the positive reviews, especially the glowing ones. Those people are either professional liars or idiots. Instead, read all the negatives, particularly the embittered, angry, cynical and self-loathing pieces -- the pieces written in anonymous fury to take revenge upon the despicable refrigerator company or the Saddam-like hard drive maker. You'll learn something, and have more fun to boot.:-)
The day Apple hawks millionaire skateboarders' sigs on its stuff is the day it no longer has any business claiming to be culturally unique or different. In fact, you could say that re-selling corporate logos like that belonging to the industry fat cats who own No Doubt isn't merely a sign of Apple's surrender to the blob. It signifies that Apple is the blob.
Branding yourself with borrowed value was always a part of the Think Different silliness. Somehow, it was a little less tinny (though no less desperate) when the spiel went that buying silicone encased in plastic brought you identification with dead heroes, pioneers and intellectuals. At least then Apple was saying, "Buck the temporal and get in bed with forever." I still laugh whenever I walk by the "Genuis Bar" at our Apple Store and see those luminous personages on the wall -- Emelia, Alfred, etc. It's a nice illusion, at least until you get the needle-across-the-record interjection of reality -- some geek telling a customer that he's got bad SDRAM. And the pantheon looks on, approvingly.
True, the message has gone somewhat down market, from "Computer to Early 20th Century Cross-Legged Peacemakers" to "Pricey pocket-sized hard drive stamped with the names of today's mega stars!" But it wouldn't matter whether you got Beck's signature or Beethoven's on the back. You'd still be paying for someone to tell you that your consumerism is your grandeur. And if you fall for such stuff, it probably is.
I can't see how this is a valid slashdot story. Well, yes they have some fun old mac stuff (if you really want an old PowerMac handing around), but who's ever heard of them before? Their website generally sucks and they seem to be simply drawing people into their liquidation and audio store.
Ah, but don't you see? We're not talking Slashdot here. This is a Mac story. And nothing is too pathetic to be a Mac story.
Did Steve discover an ingrown toenail? That's a Mac story. Have the guys in Aqua dev decided to tune up the histogram for the scrollbars? That's a Mac story. Did some PC user watch a "Switch" commercial and make a mental note to himself to visit the Apple Store the next time he's aimlessly walking around his shopping mall? Mac story, developing.
As I said, we're rapidly reaching the point where you either have to throw a ridiculous number of people (artists and designers, mostly) onto a project, introducing all sorts of management, schedule, and quality / consistency problems into an already difficult process, or you have to find ways to automate processes usually considered "creative" in nature.
Ever watch the credits roll at the end of a TV show or movie?
As gaming increases in visual (although clearly not in psychological) complexity, it's only to be expected that the production payroll will increase considerably, too. Even famously tiny id software isn't exactly a garage outfit any more. At worst, this is a case of advancing technology promising a retreat on profits; better looking games raise the bar, requiring developers to stay in the race, which necessitates hiring... Sad, I'm sure, but nobody said game publishers are supposed to be as rich as they are.;-)
Two questions for Warren:
1) How or why should this increased management challenge be any greater a burden for game developers than it is for Hollywood?
2) Why would anyone want automated content, assuming, of course, that most of the gaming industry's currently human-generated output can be considered better than Xeroxed cliche?
Oh, but haven't you heard? We Mac users only get the 'cream of the crop' of PC games, so we don't have to 'wade through all the crap.' That higher price you're paying is just another way of showing you how good Mac games are!
Coming from a PC background I can understand having to know how to partition or reformat; or move NICs to PCI slots without shared IRQs; or diagnose DLL and registry problems introduced by 3rd party software products. I did learn a lot, but that's a lot of lost productivity.
That, my friend, is why I switched, too, after years of building PCs.
What I learned about Windoze could fill several monkeys' brains. It's a hateful amount of minutiae. And all because, endlessly, the PC demands this burping and bottle feeding and diaper changing, which one learns to do in order not to be helpless, and then, after a certain time, earns for his labors the sobriquet "Power User" -- as if slavishly cleaning up after a thoughtless arrogant corporation were something to be proud of.
The relationship with my Mac is coming along quite nicely. It came poddy trained.:-)
Mickey is a boy who was in charge recapturing the precious rocks that the Dráculas they possess, however it has that to make this before its measurer of force arrives the zero.
Also it is forgetting the tell Mickey are jumping over many of crates! Excitement too much, some crates having two and three high! Not playing without alcohol in the stomach anyway for steadiness.
In the land where you're only as free as your salary allows, the library censored by its own federally-mandated censorware is sort of the ultimate symbol: knowledge, padlocked by prudes.
Mind, even if the Bush mindset elevates this kind of puritanism to a pervasive social imperative, let's not forget it was Clinton who signed the goddamn law linking funding to the use of blocking software. Moral of the story: ugly conservatism doesn't issue only from Republicans.
Hilarious interview; a figure for our time
on
Ellen Feiss Interview
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Terrifically fun read. She's obviously cooler than the people twice her age (and more) who fetishize her.
And do you know what her secret is, you middle-aged cueballs with your Feiss t-shirts and coffee mugs? Have you not read your Nabokov?
She doesn't give a fuck. Ha, ha! The ultimate object of worship in our pandering age is the celebrity created out of nothing, who doesn't care, who really can't be bothered, for whom it just happened and for whom just as easily one day it will un-happen, and, meanwhile, whose sheer disinterest turns the covetous world on its ear.
Disney was not attempting to pass the stories off as original, nor did the company try to seize control of them in any way.
Ah, so that's why it originally read "Walt Disney's Snow White" and "Walt Disney's Pinocchio" on the movie posters (and today, reads as much on the box).
So as not to suggest originality or to seize control. Very keen intertextual reading you've done there!
Slashdot Mirror
As long as we're dissing Stossel, be sure to see The Nation's superb exposé of that right wing hack:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020107&s=do wie
Well, it appears you're happy with your fate. So I'm happy for you, too, apart from the fact that your servility before wealth also consigns millions of others to that fate. And unlike you, they don't deserve it. If you want to vote for people who grind you under their thumb, that's your business. What a shame that the nation and the planet must suffer for your masochism.
Apple's aesthetic, in other words, is light years ahead of American taste. (Or maybe behind; depends on your view of shag, doesn't it.) If it were any company but Apple, I think the color-skin computer case would be a huge hit and turn out to be one of the bridge designs that transform how the post-beige box PC looks.
But Apple just doesn't know how to wallow. Aesthetically, the PC of tomorrow is likely to embody the mass tastes of today - Pottery Barn, JC Penny's, Martha Stewart, mini-vans. Whoever finds the way to cram all those crap design references into a new form for the computer will singlehandedly revive the PC industry.
So here's my modest proposal. Along with making its own trippy cases, Apple's best bet is to make a fortune licensing its tech to the Gateways and Dells of this world. Who, of course, will know what must be done - they'll promptly deploy it in cowskin patterns, Old Glory (c) waving flags, NFL team logos, photo-realistic editions featuring famous Playmates or several splendid views of the chiseled jawline of Donald Rumsfeld. The mass market can buy this stuff until it comes out of their ears, and the licensing fees can keep Apple alive. ;-)
Now, down to business: what were you freakin' thinking when you voted for George W. Bush?
Did you imagine that the fat cats whom he serves wanted you to remain in full employment when there were workers willing, nay, eager to take your jobs for much less? Did you imagine that the terrible exploitation that so long has enriched the wealthy in this country would not voraciously make a meal of you, too? Did you not see the vast numbers of foreign workers being treated like slave labor, or were you too distracted by affluence and comfort to notice?
If you have learned your lesson, then stop voting for politicians who exclusively serve the rich. Your politics has become quite expensive for you.
1) Your social class
2) The impact your downsizing is likely to have upon the stock price
3) How cheaply you can be replaced, or, conversely, how docile you remain in the face of doing the replaced workers' job(s) for your same or lower pay
And coming soon to castes who have imagined only minorities and the poor have to "volunteer" for our glorious armies:
4) Your suitability to serve in Bush's wars
As a footnote, and out of fairness, let me concede that Bush is far from wholly responsible - our present plight is due to Clintonian/Friedmanesque "market economics," of course (for more on which see the brilliant and quite amusing "One Market Under God" by Thomas Frank). Bush is merely presiding over an accelerated form of the illness, blindly making matters worse with massive tax cuts for the rich, massive military spending, and massive collusion with corporate crooks. That he's done so with the help of Democrats should not be forgotten...
Also, isn't it the case that P2P is much monitored by the entertainment industry these days, or have the news media been presenting a false picture of its level of intrusion/intimidation?
LOL! I also liked the point where our clerk bragged that "we" are a "major player." A bit of puffery that calls for but one response:
Gift wrap that, and hop to it, Major Player!
And don't underestimate PC phobia. Countless users are simply intimidated by PCs and find it terribly hard to conceive of relaxing in their presence with a game more sophisticated than Solitaire. Others who aren't intimidated bear the scars of a long dysfunctional association with Microsoft. The console overcomes such fear and distaste, providing a device to which computerphobes can relate to with a minimum of concern.
By the RIAA's standards, premature ejaculators have more sex.
No, I'd be skeptical of the ordinary people writing legitimate reviews, too. It doesn't take long reading a site such as Epinions.com to realize what an act of self-definition shopping is for Americans. Portraying satisfactions deeper than any porn star could deliver, the reviews are often windows into a banality so advanced that you wonder what these people did before the Net waited to record their deeds. Then you realize: they were cruelly forced to shop in a cage of silence, longing for the day when they could sing great songs about their trips to the cash register.
Yeah, I like a little advice on purchases, too. So my approach is this. Ignore all the positive reviews, especially the glowing ones. Those people are either professional liars or idiots. Instead, read all the negatives, particularly the embittered, angry, cynical and self-loathing pieces -- the pieces written in anonymous fury to take revenge upon the despicable refrigerator company or the Saddam-like hard drive maker. You'll learn something, and have more fun to boot. :-)
Branding yourself with borrowed value was always a part of the Think Different silliness. Somehow, it was a little less tinny (though no less desperate) when the spiel went that buying silicone encased in plastic brought you identification with dead heroes, pioneers and intellectuals. At least then Apple was saying, "Buck the temporal and get in bed with forever." I still laugh whenever I walk by the "Genuis Bar" at our Apple Store and see those luminous personages on the wall -- Emelia, Alfred, etc. It's a nice illusion, at least until you get the needle-across-the-record interjection of reality -- some geek telling a customer that he's got bad SDRAM. And the pantheon looks on, approvingly.
True, the message has gone somewhat down market, from "Computer to Early 20th Century Cross-Legged Peacemakers" to "Pricey pocket-sized hard drive stamped with the names of today's mega stars!" But it wouldn't matter whether you got Beck's signature or Beethoven's on the back. You'd still be paying for someone to tell you that your consumerism is your grandeur. And if you fall for such stuff, it probably is.
Did Steve discover an ingrown toenail? That's a Mac story. Have the guys in Aqua dev decided to tune up the histogram for the scrollbars? That's a Mac story. Did some PC user watch a "Switch" commercial and make a mental note to himself to visit the Apple Store the next time he's aimlessly walking around his shopping mall? Mac story, developing.
As gaming increases in visual (although clearly not in psychological) complexity, it's only to be expected that the production payroll will increase considerably, too. Even famously tiny id software isn't exactly a garage outfit any more. At worst, this is a case of advancing technology promising a retreat on profits; better looking games raise the bar, requiring developers to stay in the race, which necessitates hiring... Sad, I'm sure, but nobody said game publishers are supposed to be as rich as they are. ;-)
Two questions for Warren:
1) How or why should this increased management challenge be any greater a burden for game developers than it is for Hollywood?
2) Why would anyone want automated content, assuming, of course, that most of the gaming industry's currently human-generated output can be considered better than Xeroxed cliche?
Oh, but haven't you heard? We Mac users only get the 'cream of the crop' of PC games, so we don't have to 'wade through all the crap.' That higher price you're paying is just another way of showing you how good Mac games are!
What I learned about Windoze could fill several monkeys' brains. It's a hateful amount of minutiae. And all because, endlessly, the PC demands this burping and bottle feeding and diaper changing, which one learns to do in order not to be helpless, and then, after a certain time, earns for his labors the sobriquet "Power User" -- as if slavishly cleaning up after a thoughtless arrogant corporation were something to be proud of.
The relationship with my Mac is coming along quite nicely. It came poddy trained. :-)
Mind, even if the Bush mindset elevates this kind of puritanism to a pervasive social imperative, let's not forget it was Clinton who signed the goddamn law linking funding to the use of blocking software. Moral of the story: ugly conservatism doesn't issue only from Republicans.
Terrifically fun read. She's obviously cooler than the people twice her age (and more) who fetishize her. And do you know what her secret is, you middle-aged cueballs with your Feiss t-shirts and coffee mugs? Have you not read your Nabokov? She doesn't give a fuck. Ha, ha! The ultimate object of worship in our pandering age is the celebrity created out of nothing, who doesn't care, who really can't be bothered, for whom it just happened and for whom just as easily one day it will un-happen, and, meanwhile, whose sheer disinterest turns the covetous world on its ear.
So as not to suggest originality or to seize control. Very keen intertextual reading you've done there!
On a mid-2002 ibook, that is. Do any aftermarket shops provide upgrades?