...a glorified press release web site like Engadget for news. When news that is just regurgitated p.r. becomes the basis of decision making, you're depending on professional flatterers and your decisions will be no better than the sum of their servility and gullibility.
The problem goes a bit further, unfortunately, than tech news. Much the same servility in the higher reaches of the press explains why "weapons of mass destruction" that don't exist become the basis for a war; in that case, infamously, the faked press releases were from Washington and its allies, and the chief regurgitator was the New York Times.
It wouldn't be a bad thing to ask why we have become such a bunch of suckers in the U.S.
Those comments didn't stop Greenpeace representatives from using the meeting as an opportunity to advertise the groups (sic) anti-Apple campaign.
God, I love that kind of hyperbole. You can practically smell the fear and obedience coiling off it, the fumes as it were blinding the writer to the placement of apostrophes.
Sure, fanboyism pretty much selects for monochromatic points of view. The point is always to circle the wagons and defend the ideal (not to mention the stock). Criticism can rarely be brooked; you'll notice the same about more than a few churches and political parties.
But this time out... Heh. Even measured against most ecstatic fanboyism, the headline takes honors: it's like something from the old Pravda, where the writers would whip out the superlatives whenever some gasbag was sober long enough to wheeze up a few words at a podium. Premier Brezhnev Challenges West's Mendacity and Corruption, etc. (But never the subhead: Later, impregnates terrified farmer's daughter in limousine behind silo.) True believers are always ready to fall to the knee praising the official line. What's amusing though perhaps also a little sad is how much alike, finally, in their rabidness are the commie and the capitalist stooge when the knee is bent!
The simple rebuttal to Jobs' snark is that it doesn't require an engineer to see that Apple pollutes, pollutes extravagantly, and has been exposed as such behind its veil of carefully manufactured, commodified hip. That's the issue--not whether Greenpeace has been overly generous to other companies. Greenpeace's failings aren't transmuted into Apple strengths. If they were, Jobs would have laughed off rather than acquiesced to the reform campaign.
I'm pleased to see Apple cleaning up its act. A shame it can't do so less bitterly, or without its choirs bugling hysterically when it finally acts on a long overdue responsibility. And how petty of Premier Jobs to act sore because the Greenpeace campaign has rung a bell with many of the company's consumers.
What did he expect? After years of assiduously professing to be "different" and, by attachment to certain cultural icons who appeared in the ads, "better," Apple's consumers have come to expect that might mean something larger than, say, the difference between the Finder and Windows Explorer. Such are the perils of corporate identity. And such is the price of courting liberals, Steve: in order to stay in their good graces, you actually have to practice some liberalism from time to time.
For someone with such a reputation you would expect him to be more interesting.
Yeah, but it's a casual, nostalgic discussion by a geezer looking back on how many chips went into his only two arcade video games, both as it happens involving colorless bouncing 2d blocks. That's never going to be a chat with Stephen Hawking, I'm afraid.
Could we please stop this Apple fanboyism? How is this interesting in any way?
"Today the great chairman Mao visited a poor child in the village Mangtung. He gave the child healthy food and read a story. This how out great chairman Mao cares cares for all the people."
Superb post.
Amusing how in recent times our discourse in "the land of the free" so closely resembles that of Maoism, with its ruthless pollyannaism, its sinister collective cheeriness.
Amusing, not to say tragic. Because it's hardly a problem confined to the fanboys and their hysterical materialism, as anyone knows who's read an American newspaper in the age of our Glorious Leader Bush.
Part of me hates myself for saying this, and I acknowledge that it's elitist as all hell, but I sort of wish these guys (the ones "in the know" about Steve's responsiveness over email) would keep it to themselves. Because if Steve stops answering his email, that's another piece gone of the old Apple spirit.
Part of me hates myself for telling you this, and I acknowledge that it's harsh as all hell, but I'm sure you're man enough to finally face the truth.
It's great social policy for Sun to spread OOo, and I admire that. Hopefully this port will be of benefit to somebody years from now. Of course, in the real world, we can't wait. We need our tools today.
I run OOo 2.x when stuck on a Windows box, and Writer, at least, is decent. While it may look and feel dated, I couldn't care less. It gets the job done.
What didn't work for me were the X11 and NeoOffice ports: sluggish, fussy on early 2000s-era PPC hardware. I even tried setting up a relative's business on NeoOffice on Mac Minis, and its lethargy and idiosyncracies drove the employees crazy. That led to a pile of new licenses for the Redmond mafia.
For myself, I demo'd the gamut of OS X word processors and settled, happily, on the low-cost and high-powered Mellel. It's one of the only apps I've never regretted buying.
Apple used to cater to people who care about quality. Then came the horde of ex-Windows users, none of whom have especially good taste or discernment, all of whom would lap up whitewashed shit
How's that HyperCard mailing label program coming along? Management's getting nervous.
Slashdot response: @#$%^! They'll just use them to listen to vulgar rap music or break them while conducting drug deals! Idiotic government!
Socialism for Slashdotters = Home mortgage interest deduction
Slashdot response: Yay! With the tax savings from my house deduction, I can buy more Sailor Moon episodes! While enjoying this wealth transfer from other taxpayers I'll be plopped in front of my flatscreen TV, which was paid for with an interest-deductible home equity loan! You know, I like to piss and moan when somebody down the food chain gets something, but make no mistake: wise is the government that subsidizes my fantasies about Japanese school girls with supersized eyes!
I can't wait to see how much trouble Apple has keeping up with demand when they announce Core 2 Duo Mac Minis and new iMacs with OS X 10.5 and CS3. If they actually release any kind of ~$1000 xMac they'd have to increase security at Apple stores to keep riots from occurring.
Security Log of Rent-A-Cop Sam MacSnappy
9:54 a.m. The store is due to open in a few minutes, and already there's a vast, unruly mob outside. Look at those thugs. I saw one guy crunching on a celery stick in an obviously agressive manner, and another slurping a Zero Fat Smoothie with total hostility for authority. Go ahead, Zippy. Make my day.
10:13 a.m. First arrest. Somebody named Merriam got a little too friendly with the new sub-$1000 unit. I told him, "You can do those kinds of things at home in your 1970's-decorated palace of sin," but in the end I still had to mace the sucker.
10:28 a.m. Man down! Man down! They're got Security Associate Clyde Dawkins on his back, and they're tickling him with a long feather boa and singing the "Macarena"! It's just unspeakable!
10:37 a.m. We've barricaded the storefront, but I don't know how long we can last. All these guys in thick, black retro eyeglass frames are throwing themselves against our makeshift barriers, then collapsing with long, attenuated sighs. It's like watching insane undernourished salmon trying to spawn--salmon in pencil-thin black jeans! The staffers are no help, standing around discussing their favorite yogurts and "the identify crisis of the Finder," whatever the hell that is.
10:48 a.m. That's it. I quit. No money is worth watching a grown man kiss an iPod.
No Microsoft. Apple may not be a company of saints, but they're at least an order of magnitude less evil than Microsoft.
Yeah, well, while I'm no fan of Microsoft, let's not beatify Apple just yet. At last count, Apple had sold at least an order of magnitude more DRM-infected songs than had Microsoft. So you might want to recalibrate your Evilometer.
For that matter, Apple's just seen fit to introduce a 30% surcharge on DRM-free songs. Since digital music introduces economies of scale that should reduce song prices, why are they increasing?
Zees morning, UFO lands in Paris outside Montmartre. Leetle green hommes, they ask to be taken to leader. Unfortunately, zey ask Sartre. Jean Paul he says there ees no such thing as leader, "leader" ees fantasy we are creating to deny zee eesential notheengness of our absurd lives. Green hommes ees crushed. They get back in ship. Bon voyage, mes amis.
But at least your Mac...feels snappier now, right?;-)
Good luck sorting out this headache. These days, one doesn't install an update until letting the guinea pigs go first. I visit Macfixit.com, parse the complaints, see what's been broken and decide if it's worth it. Running a point version or two behind OS X (with separate security fixes installed, naturally) isn't uncommon.
Perhaps Apple's dropping the "computer" from its name is symbolic in more ways than one.
The Slashdot headline is entirely, willfully and embarrassingly wrong: the school isn't "dumping Windows" or "going all Mac."
Instead, the college is continuing to use Windows while switching to Mac hardware...which, of course, now sports commodity hardware.
That may speak well of Jobs' shift of the platform to Intel--or will if others follow the college's lead--but it doesn't justify Zonk going all breathless fanboy on us.;-)
Gatekeeping mass taste may make the big bucks for Apple, but it has changed (for me, anyway) one part of the experience of using an Apple machine.
Opening the iTunes store now means being shopped and pitched, advertised and shlepped loudly for mediocre TV, movies and music. What started in low-key mode a couple of years ago is now a major exercise in bad taste, a Wal-Martified borough of bad.
No, thanks: if I wanted the latest Disney or Top 40 stuff, there are SUVs and McDonalds and box stores and TV remote controls just waiting to stuff me full of it. Shoot up some botox, find a still-functioning credit card, weaponize the McMansion security system and off to the Wal-Mart!
"...they'd probably put my head in a guillotine," as Dylan sang.
Quite apart from the ethical concerns this technology poses, the following tidbit is truly fascinating:
The researchers are honing the technique to distinguish between passing thoughts and genuine intentions.
I'd like to see if the technology could be harnessed for monitoring creativity, which is in one sense "passing thoughts." Suppose you could decipher activity that amounts to what we call inspiration. Now, with a feedback loop mechanism, you could see what affective states produce your best ideas.
I want one of these to play with before the Thought Police get them.
I would add only that in the advent of revolutionary technologies useful to fascism, there is an obvious remedy. Use the tech on the fascists, first. We should put our pols, chattering classes, captains of industry and marketing whizzes under these scanners before they do so to us.
The only problem with my proposal is one I freely admit. Not enough people will be bothered by what turns up. While I would gladly have the leaders you envision, this is a minority taste.
Slashdot Mirror
The consequences: environmental destruction, massive public waste.
All this so a few who care nothing for the rest of us can watch Bruce Willis hunt down mythical terrorists on bigger and bigger screens?
The problem goes a bit further, unfortunately, than tech news. Much the same servility in the higher reaches of the press explains why "weapons of mass destruction" that don't exist become the basis for a war; in that case, infamously, the faked press releases were from Washington and its allies, and the chief regurgitator was the New York Times.
It wouldn't be a bad thing to ask why we have become such a bunch of suckers in the U.S.
God, I love that kind of hyperbole. You can practically smell the fear and obedience coiling off it, the fumes as it were blinding the writer to the placement of apostrophes.
Sure, fanboyism pretty much selects for monochromatic points of view. The point is always to circle the wagons and defend the ideal (not to mention the stock). Criticism can rarely be brooked; you'll notice the same about more than a few churches and political parties.
But this time out... Heh. Even measured against most ecstatic fanboyism, the headline takes honors: it's like something from the old Pravda, where the writers would whip out the superlatives whenever some gasbag was sober long enough to wheeze up a few words at a podium. Premier Brezhnev Challenges West's Mendacity and Corruption, etc. (But never the subhead: Later, impregnates terrified farmer's daughter in limousine behind silo.) True believers are always ready to fall to the knee praising the official line. What's amusing though perhaps also a little sad is how much alike, finally, in their rabidness are the commie and the capitalist stooge when the knee is bent!
The simple rebuttal to Jobs' snark is that it doesn't require an engineer to see that Apple pollutes, pollutes extravagantly, and has been exposed as such behind its veil of carefully manufactured, commodified hip. That's the issue--not whether Greenpeace has been overly generous to other companies. Greenpeace's failings aren't transmuted into Apple strengths. If they were, Jobs would have laughed off rather than acquiesced to the reform campaign.
I'm pleased to see Apple cleaning up its act. A shame it can't do so less bitterly, or without its choirs bugling hysterically when it finally acts on a long overdue responsibility. And how petty of Premier Jobs to act sore because the Greenpeace campaign has rung a bell with many of the company's consumers.
What did he expect? After years of assiduously professing to be "different" and, by attachment to certain cultural icons who appeared in the ads, "better," Apple's consumers have come to expect that might mean something larger than, say, the difference between the Finder and Windows Explorer. Such are the perils of corporate identity. And such is the price of courting liberals, Steve: in order to stay in their good graces, you actually have to practice some liberalism from time to time.
Yeah, but it's a casual, nostalgic discussion by a geezer looking back on how many chips went into his only two arcade video games, both as it happens involving colorless bouncing 2d blocks. That's never going to be a chat with Stephen Hawking, I'm afraid.
"Today the great chairman Mao visited a poor child in the village Mangtung. He gave the child healthy food and read a story. This how out great chairman Mao cares cares for all the people."
Superb post.
Amusing how in recent times our discourse in "the land of the free" so closely resembles that of Maoism, with its ruthless pollyannaism, its sinister collective cheeriness.
Amusing, not to say tragic. Because it's hardly a problem confined to the fanboys and their hysterical materialism, as anyone knows who's read an American newspaper in the age of our Glorious Leader Bush.
Part of me hates myself for telling you this, and I acknowledge that it's harsh as all hell, but I'm sure you're man enough to finally face the truth.
All those letters you got from Santa as a kid?
Steve Jobs wrote those.
I run OOo 2.x when stuck on a Windows box, and Writer, at least, is decent. While it may look and feel dated, I couldn't care less. It gets the job done.
What didn't work for me were the X11 and NeoOffice ports: sluggish, fussy on early 2000s-era PPC hardware. I even tried setting up a relative's business on NeoOffice on Mac Minis, and its lethargy and idiosyncracies drove the employees crazy. That led to a pile of new licenses for the Redmond mafia.
For myself, I demo'd the gamut of OS X word processors and settled, happily, on the low-cost and high-powered Mellel. It's one of the only apps I've never regretted buying.
2. No removable battery or buttons.
3. Inability to write own applications.
4. ???
5. Profit!
How's that HyperCard mailing label program coming along? Management's getting nervous.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is the mod that makes Doom 3 fun!
Slashdot response: @#$%^! They'll just use them to listen to vulgar rap music or break them while conducting drug deals! Idiotic government!
Socialism for Slashdotters = Home mortgage interest deduction
Slashdot response: Yay! With the tax savings from my house deduction, I can buy more Sailor Moon episodes! While enjoying this wealth transfer from other taxpayers I'll be plopped in front of my flatscreen TV, which was paid for with an interest-deductible home equity loan! You know, I like to piss and moan when somebody down the food chain gets something, but make no mistake: wise is the government that subsidizes my fantasies about Japanese school girls with supersized eyes!
Security Log of Rent-A-Cop Sam MacSnappy
9:54 a.m. The store is due to open in a few minutes, and already there's a vast, unruly mob outside. Look at those thugs. I saw one guy crunching on a celery stick in an obviously agressive manner, and another slurping a Zero Fat Smoothie with total hostility for authority. Go ahead, Zippy. Make my day.
10:13 a.m. First arrest. Somebody named Merriam got a little too friendly with the new sub-$1000 unit. I told him, "You can do those kinds of things at home in your 1970's-decorated palace of sin," but in the end I still had to mace the sucker.
10:28 a.m. Man down! Man down! They're got Security Associate Clyde Dawkins on his back, and they're tickling him with a long feather boa and singing the "Macarena"! It's just unspeakable!
10:37 a.m. We've barricaded the storefront, but I don't know how long we can last. All these guys in thick, black retro eyeglass frames are throwing themselves against our makeshift barriers, then collapsing with long, attenuated sighs. It's like watching insane undernourished salmon trying to spawn--salmon in pencil-thin black jeans! The staffers are no help, standing around discussing their favorite yogurts and "the identify crisis of the Finder," whatever the hell that is.
10:48 a.m. That's it. I quit. No money is worth watching a grown man kiss an iPod.
Yeah, well, while I'm no fan of Microsoft, let's not beatify Apple just yet. At last count, Apple had sold at least an order of magnitude more DRM-infected songs than had Microsoft. So you might want to recalibrate your Evilometer.
For that matter, Apple's just seen fit to introduce a 30% surcharge on DRM-free songs. Since digital music introduces economies of scale that should reduce song prices, why are they increasing?
Even if you don't believe in Jesus, He believes in Unix.
Zees morning, UFO lands in Paris outside Montmartre. Leetle green hommes, they ask to be taken to leader. Unfortunately, zey ask Sartre. Jean Paul he says there ees no such thing as leader, "leader" ees fantasy we are creating to deny zee eesential notheengness of our absurd lives. Green hommes ees crushed. They get back in ship. Bon voyage, mes amis.
That's a pretty transparent fallacy.
Since the Apple box only plays iTunes store content, its actual cost is as high as your desire to watch new media.
Only if you use it as sparingly as an old lady does ice skates will it be "cheaper."
2) Easier because it does less
True, in the same way that the mentally deficient are more efficient cogitators because they think less.
Heh.
+5 Slavish Adoration In Face of Technical and Usability Deficiencies
Good luck sorting out this headache. These days, one doesn't install an update until letting the guinea pigs go first. I visit Macfixit.com, parse the complaints, see what's been broken and decide if it's worth it. Running a point version or two behind OS X (with separate security fixes installed, naturally) isn't uncommon.
Perhaps Apple's dropping the "computer" from its name is symbolic in more ways than one.
The Slashdot headline is entirely, willfully and embarrassingly wrong: the school isn't "dumping Windows" or "going all Mac."
Instead, the college is continuing to use Windows while switching to Mac hardware...which, of course, now sports commodity hardware.
That may speak well of Jobs' shift of the platform to Intel--or will if others follow the college's lead--but it doesn't justify Zonk going all breathless fanboy on us.
Wow: own a cell phone or stfu. You set the bar for debate pretty high, don't you?
Einstein never traveled into space, but he had a few ideas about it. Space-wide ideas, at that.
Making guesses about herd consumerism in late capitalism doesn't exactly require an Einstein.
Opening the iTunes store now means being shopped and pitched, advertised and shlepped loudly for mediocre TV, movies and music. What started in low-key mode a couple of years ago is now a major exercise in bad taste, a Wal-Martified borough of bad.
No, thanks: if I wanted the latest Disney or Top 40 stuff, there are SUVs and McDonalds and box stores and TV remote controls just waiting to stuff me full of it. Shoot up some botox, find a still-functioning credit card, weaponize the McMansion security system and off to the Wal-Mart!
Goodbye iTMS. Hello, emusic.com.
Well said!
Quite apart from the ethical concerns this technology poses, the following tidbit is truly fascinating:
I'd like to see if the technology could be harnessed for monitoring creativity, which is in one sense "passing thoughts." Suppose you could decipher activity that amounts to what we call inspiration. Now, with a feedback loop mechanism, you could see what affective states produce your best ideas.I want one of these to play with before the Thought Police get them.
I would add only that in the advent of revolutionary technologies useful to fascism, there is an obvious remedy. Use the tech on the fascists, first. We should put our pols, chattering classes, captains of industry and marketing whizzes under these scanners before they do so to us.
The only problem with my proposal is one I freely admit. Not enough people will be bothered by what turns up. While I would gladly have the leaders you envision, this is a minority taste.