first, i wasn't placing blame on anything. And it's fine that youy don't think a feeling of inadequacy comes from marketing. That phrase is actually from a first year marketing class at NYU. INSPIRE INADEQUACY AND RESOLVE IT. That's the perfect commercial. So whether you "think" it or not, it's what marketers are trying to do.
humans learn and adapt through repetition. I can imagine that even the most "evolved" of us is affected in one way or another by advertising by virtue of its insistent ubiquity.
I agree that morality is subjective; humans with differing mores shape its dimensions. However, let's remove the label of advertising and consider the basics:
1. label recipient inadequate. 2. outline product. 3. consumption of product = end of inadequacy.
many things follow this paradigm. organized religion. drug dealing. all manner of fraud schemes. the stock market.
you might not agree that organized religion or drug dealing are evil, but many would. consequently, the statement "do no evil" that is espoused by Google means nothing, other than to serve as the catch phrase brayed forth from the mouths of google fanboys as contextual ads flash across their foreheads.
they are smart... certainly...those google guys are. but they certainly do evil by the average measure.
marketing follows from this principle: the first thing a marketer must do is make the prospective buyer feel inadequate. Then the marketer must insinuate that the product at hand will solve one's inadequacy. In other words, create the problem and propose the solution.
If one considers marketing an evil, then google became an evil company as soon as they got into advertising.
Re:"Most readers have probably heard about Firefox
on
Firefox Secrets
·
· Score: 1
Interestingly enough, while Firefox does feast greedily on system resources, it is otherwise far superior to IE in every way.
There is some evidence to indicate that religion promotes stability in society across the board.
-Kids who go to religiously affiliated schools tend to do better than children who go to public schools, despite public schools often spending as much as twice more per child.
-Married couples who regularly attend church are less likely to divorce.
-children who regularly attend church are less likely to be truants and juvenile offenders.
I'm not going to cite sources. I don't want to get into a rigorous discussion. My point is that there are social benefits to religious institutions, as there are serious drawbacks and detriments.
Most people don't function well if they don't know what they're working for. Religion functions to serve as an end goal, even if it is imaginary.
To that end, I don't think that raising kids to believe mythology is child abuse. I look at myths as training wheels that the child chooses to remove at his own discretion when he matures.
Society engages in all sort of mythologies that organize the world in an orderly way. Money is merely paper (increasingly bits) but people kill for it, sell their honor and integrity for it, give up their lives one minute at a time for an hourly wage and convince themselves somehow that there is virtue in it. It's all arbitrary.
Finally, being so vehemently anti-religion is no different from being vehemently pro-religion. The only difference is that a religious world since the dawn of civilization has resulted in a population of 6 billion and growing. I don't see a convincing model of an atheistic system yielding similar results, and I'm an atheist. A smart man doesn't break a thing that works on such a large scale.
So to do many Christians in the US who belong to some of the bigger churches, which require tithes in order for the worshipper to gain access to many of the churches' community building functions. All of which is to say, there are millions of Americans giving ten percent to their religious institutions right now - a portion of it probably as we type, actually.
And to the press, Muslims are evil terrorists who hate freedom, and Bill Gates is a convicted monopolist who's jumped the shark.
Time Magazine's parent company is embroiled in negotiations with Microsoft, so some sucking up never hurts.
Look at it like this. The only happy old people I know are obscenely rich. I want to live a long time. I guess I'd like to be happy. So I guess it makes sense to be obscenely rich.
In that paradigm, doing whatever it takes to get billions doesn't seem that bad. Plus, I'd have great stories to tell the grandkids.
I guess I'm different from a lot of the Slashdot crowd. But whatever; I'm gonna try whatever I can get away with. It just seems more fun that way.
guiliani was an interesting choice because he showed the modern day merits of an autocratic approach to governmental policy. Since, the country has shifted to follow that example. New Yorkers bristled under his increase in police force size, his abject and purposeful alienation of minorities, his notions of pervasive policing and his embrace of technology and subversive measures to undermine crime. It was these very policies that New Yorkers hated that helped the city rebound so quickly from 9/11. The guy ruled with an iron fist.
Interestingly enough, There's a guy in New York named Eliot Spitzer who uses similar tactics. He's the attorney general and he's the scourge of wall street.
But that's besides the point. What I think is interesting is that much of the banter is about whether or not Gates deserves this "honor" as opposed to whether or not the Time's Man of the Year is actually relevant in 2005. I've had friends who got into publishing and journalism after school... and they weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. Assuming more of the same in the industry, I'm not prone to taking much seriously when journalists stray from objectivity and decide to weigh in with opinion. Which is to say, I'm not much of a fan of journalism. I'd rather they turn the cameras on, shoot some footage, and let me decide for myself.
Forget that Bill might or might not be worthy of the award... more pertinent is that the award no longer has merit. Who the fuck cares what Time editors think?
most instant noodles have very little nutritional value. I think there's another case of some dude in Japan who dided after he holed up in his room playing games, living on instant noodles.
I think, in microcosm, that a lot of this happens in the OSS world. There are too many leaders, too many forks, too many ideas about how to do similar things, and not enough consensus. It's kind of like a too much of a good thing happening, too many really smart people with wills determined to do things their own way. Or as you excellently put... too many predators.
Re: the other post, I agree. It doesn't predicate dictatorship, nor does it assert that the followers are dumb. However, I do agree with you about the evolution of the two social subspecies.
what I think is interesting though, is that with computing, the web, and this free-for-all information sharing, the followers are increasingly re-armed. Will, organization, and re-education are the limiting factors to revolution in that regard, I think. Just seeing the sheer amount of stuff on the web, I always amazed not by how many terrorist acts that are reported in the modern world, but how few.
It may be, that with this evolution of two social subspecies, the fight is being slowly "bred" out of the followers.
Good to see your religion-inspired nature is not wont to sarcasm or condescension. I went to Catholic School for eight years, was a choirboy, and had an uncle who was a Baptist minister. Because we had to support his growing church, there was a span of time during my childhood where I spent whole Sundays in church, treated to healthy dosings of both Catholic and Baptist dogma. It was like quiet calisthenics for an hour (Catholic Church), followed by like three hours of rigorous foot-stomping aerobics.
All of which is to say, my notion of religion is relatively mature. I perceive religions to be political institutions that predate the state and paved the way for the state to come into existence. Regardless of the foundations of faith that support a religion, it is still a political institution. And at the foundation of political institutions are laws that bind its citizens. These laws require no understanding, but they do demand adherence.
In other words, do this(tm) because I said so.
It was my mistake to bring up religion in the first place, and another to even respond to your post. What can I say though; those chimps got me beat!
I know you're joking, but Askenazi Jews have the highest mean IQs in the world, and they're pretty devout, which is how they maintain the supposed genetic component to their "intelligence" (they don't breed with outsiders). The regressiveness, perceived or real, in Americans goes a bit deeper than religion, I suspect.
Agreed. One might even argue that a vast majority of adults are conditioned to do the same.
Much of the success of our civilization has to do with the critical mass of the population following orders for their entire lives.
This is just me blowing smoke, but maybe the downside to state-of-nature fitness is that not enough followers survive to do the critical mass work of building a civilization. What's the cliche... too many cooks? The benefit of our civilization is that bulk population composed mostly of those who will follow instructions dutifully; this is the strength of humanity.
I had a discussion with a friend of mine about religion. She was raised religious, and while an athiest now, she was happy to have been raised religiously. I asked why; she responded that the religious foundation answered questions she would have had (albeit falsely) about God, death, universe, etc. and thus eased her mind about them until she was mature enough to decide that it was mythology to her. In other words, she did exactly as you suggested, emulated a successful culture dynamic too complex for her to understand fully.
We all do it as humans. It's what religion is. Do this because I(tm) said so.
Agreed. There are physical development issues too at that age. 3 and 4 year old humans are pretty much helpless, whereas similarly aged chimps can keep up with the pack and feed themselves and are physically prodigious in comparison. I saw some thing on young chimps, and they were given toys that similarly aged children would play with; and they tore the toys apart. Like pieces of brightly colored plastic everywhere.
I saw something recently about how chimps learn. The scientist made a point to note similarities and differences in human/chimp learning: chimp girls mature earlier than chimp boys by about two years: they learn quicker and are more astute in picking up chimp culture as relates to toolset, etc. The boys couldn't focus on a task and instead bothered everyone in the pack and exhibited what humans would term ADHD behavior, i.e. impulsive, short attention span behavior... roughing each other up, playfighting, etc. It was interesting. In this many think that chimps are similar to humans. What was different: chimps didn't teach their young. The scientist noted humans were unique in the fact that we taught our young. As far as the chimps were concerned, either you paid attention and picked up a skillset, or you were fucked.
Life is such an amazing dynamic thing man. I'm just humbled and in awe of the whole thing.
agreed.... so to the incidence of stomach cancer relative to those who've had ulcers. Ulcers are now known to be caused by h.pylori infections, which are notoriously difficult to eradicate.
... sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!!!!!
Seriously, back on topic: I'm ambivalent about manned space flight. Developing to accommodate man in space is a serious engineering hindrance, not to mention that there are serious medical issues that we've yet to address about man's ability to survive after prolonged space exposure. Then there are payload issues - too much weight for life support et al that we haven't been able to optimize yet. If you're talking manned space flight - it's really like 1969 all over again - we haven't developed much since then, other than to put a couple of exercise bikes in space and some MREs.
In other words, manned space travel have been poorly actualized. Whereas probe space exploration can move quickly and without new research, we have the tech, we have the means... and it can only get cheaper as soon as we can start mass producing them things and firing them off.
I guess I'm in favor of a dual-headed dragon approach. Full speed ahead on the probes - which only an entity like NASA could fund... and do research and develop manned flights. But both have to be done concurrently... not this one at the expense of the other bullshit we do now.
Launching satellites and junk can totally be privatized and it should be. It's just ferrying now; it's not like you've got to reinvent the wheel or anything.
I'm a normal user. Not a tech... I run three windows boxes and a notebook on my home network. Three instances of XP pro and one instance of 200 pro.
I have auto-update active on all machines. i have antivirus, spyware, and adware programs running on all machines. None crash, none slow down, none are infected. And all of my machines were cheap. Dirt cheap.
I use firefox; I agree that internet explorer is a shitty browser.
The reason the average computer user doesn't switch off MS is because there is no reason to.
And for reference, all of my horrid computer experiences have been with Apple machines. I work in film, and the entire industry works off powerbooks. The last production company I freelanced for had huge problems with their Airport. Then three Powerbooks went down in the course of a month. Then a drive broke on a fourth powerbook. Ipods went dead, etc.
I find it interesting what Apple users are willing to put up with given the comparatively expensive hardware. At the same firm, they made fun of my Dell notebook and my HP pocket pc. But with a 1 gig sd card i had music and video for my pocket pc that synced seamlessly with my notebook (WMP 10), and my pocket PC was perfect for skyping/gaming/reading/PIMing with. I can imagine that my gadgets can do way more than comparable Apple products at a third of the total cost cost. And I was always working while their Powerbooks were on some UPS truck going to be serviced. In my book, I was the one who should have been doing the laughing.
All of which is to say, experiences are relative. I imagine that most users (myself included) don't switch from Windows machines because there is simply no need to. Wintel machines do what I need them to do at a cost I'm willing to pay.
Agreed about the gunfights. It's a very thorough and airtight film, from casting, writing, through to music and art direction.
Also an interesting example of a film that did poorly because of marketing.
I did listen to the commentary and it made that scene all the more hilarious. It was because it was so unexpected, yet in retrospect, the completely rational thing to do that made it such a great scene. She'd be scarred for life from that beating... therefore the boyfriend would be owned for the length of that relationship. Bananas.
Of course, Sarah Silverman's adlibs in the beginning. There's nothing hotter than a chick with a filthy mouth.
I agree with you totally. History has already proven with other devices.
You mention cars. It's the same with other forms. Radio, television, planes, etc.
Computing is awesome because it became ubiquitous before it became standardized. I'm not a historian, but I'm not sure if that's ever happened before. We're going through the standardization phase now.
One of the most persistent slashdot memes is the "in korea, only old people.... " and I think it's because younger people there consider email the equivalent of sitting down and writing a letter... in other words, antiquated. Even here on slashdot, fun is made of the ten people in the world who are still ham radio enthusiasts, etc.
Around the world, people routinely give up freedom for convenience. I don't think it will be different in this regard.
I'm not necessarily proposing that things go in the manner I described. It's just that I can imagine that the status quo is invested in it.
Re: network computing: I'm pretty certain we're heading that way. It's a bandwidth issue. Ultimately, we won't buy software at all. Very few companies will give us access to their code. This model, they would probably contend, would serve to drastically reduce piracy.
I think that several Asian markets will be interesting testbeds, as they've already built out the bandwidth necessary for a more centralized computing experience. That should be interesting.
Again, I'm not proposing it. I'm actually opposed to centralization in most forms. Centralization is de facto oppression. I'm not interested.
However, things like the Apple computing experience and ITunes are already paving the way. Plug and Play all the way. Don't worry about how your machine works - it just works. Seamless... negligible input from the end user. And we all applaud it.
Slashdot Mirror
first, i wasn't placing blame on anything. And it's fine that youy don't think a feeling of inadequacy comes from marketing. That phrase is actually from a first year marketing class at NYU. INSPIRE INADEQUACY AND RESOLVE IT. That's the perfect commercial. So whether you "think" it or not, it's what marketers are trying to do.
humans learn and adapt through repetition. I can imagine that even the most "evolved" of us is affected in one way or another by advertising by virtue of its insistent ubiquity.
I agree that morality is subjective; humans with differing mores shape its dimensions. However, let's remove the label of advertising and consider the basics:
1. label recipient inadequate.
2. outline product.
3. consumption of product = end of inadequacy.
many things follow this paradigm. organized religion. drug dealing. all manner of fraud schemes. the stock market.
you might not agree that organized religion or drug dealing are evil, but many would. consequently, the statement "do no evil" that is espoused by Google means nothing, other than to serve as the catch phrase brayed forth from the mouths of google fanboys as contextual ads flash across their foreheads.
they are smart... certainly...those google guys are. but they certainly do evil by the average measure.
i agree with you.
marketing follows from this principle: the first thing a marketer must do is make the prospective buyer feel inadequate. Then the marketer must insinuate that the product at hand will solve one's inadequacy. In other words, create the problem and propose the solution.
If one considers marketing an evil, then google became an evil company as soon as they got into advertising.
Interestingly enough, while Firefox does feast greedily on system resources, it is otherwise far superior to IE in every way.
There is some evidence to indicate that religion promotes stability in society across the board.
-Kids who go to religiously affiliated schools tend to do better than children who go to public schools, despite public schools often spending as much as twice more per child.
-Married couples who regularly attend church are less likely to divorce.
-children who regularly attend church are less likely to be truants and juvenile offenders.
I'm not going to cite sources. I don't want to get into a rigorous discussion. My point is that there are social benefits to religious institutions, as there are serious drawbacks and detriments.
Most people don't function well if they don't know what they're working for. Religion functions to serve as an end goal, even if it is imaginary.
To that end, I don't think that raising kids to believe mythology is child abuse. I look at myths as training wheels that the child chooses to remove at his own discretion when he matures.
Society engages in all sort of mythologies that organize the world in an orderly way. Money is merely paper (increasingly bits) but people kill for it, sell their honor and integrity for it, give up their lives one minute at a time for an hourly wage and convince themselves somehow that there is virtue in it. It's all arbitrary.
Finally, being so vehemently anti-religion is no different from being vehemently pro-religion. The only difference is that a religious world since the dawn of civilization has resulted in a population of 6 billion and growing. I don't see a convincing model of an atheistic system yielding similar results, and I'm an atheist. A smart man doesn't break a thing that works on such a large scale.
So to do many Christians in the US who belong to some of the bigger churches, which require tithes in order for the worshipper to gain access to many of the churches' community building functions. All of which is to say, there are millions of Americans giving ten percent to their religious institutions right now - a portion of it probably as we type, actually.
And to the press, Muslims are evil terrorists who hate freedom, and Bill Gates is a convicted monopolist who's jumped the shark.
Time Magazine's parent company is embroiled in negotiations with Microsoft, so some sucking up never hurts.
Look at it like this. The only happy old people I know are obscenely rich. I want to live a long time. I guess I'd like to be happy. So I guess it makes sense to be obscenely rich.
In that paradigm, doing whatever it takes to get billions doesn't seem that bad. Plus, I'd have great stories to tell the grandkids.
I guess I'm different from a lot of the Slashdot crowd. But whatever; I'm gonna try whatever I can get away with. It just seems more fun that way.
guiliani was an interesting choice because he showed the modern day merits of an autocratic approach to governmental policy. Since, the country has shifted to follow that example. New Yorkers bristled under his increase in police force size, his abject and purposeful alienation of minorities, his notions of pervasive policing and his embrace of technology and subversive measures to undermine crime. It was these very policies that New Yorkers hated that helped the city rebound so quickly from 9/11. The guy ruled with an iron fist.
Interestingly enough, There's a guy in New York named Eliot Spitzer who uses similar tactics. He's the attorney general and he's the scourge of wall street.
But that's besides the point. What I think is interesting is that much of the banter is about whether or not Gates deserves this "honor" as opposed to whether or not the Time's Man of the Year is actually relevant in 2005. I've had friends who got into publishing and journalism after school... and they weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. Assuming more of the same in the industry, I'm not prone to taking much seriously when journalists stray from objectivity and decide to weigh in with opinion. Which is to say, I'm not much of a fan of journalism. I'd rather they turn the cameras on, shoot some footage, and let me decide for myself.
Forget that Bill might or might not be worthy of the award... more pertinent is that the award no longer has merit. Who the fuck cares what Time editors think?
An ad hominem argument goes like this:
1. A makes claim B;
2. there is something objectionable about A,
3. thus, claim B is false.
Is that where you were going? Just curious.
most instant noodles have very little nutritional value. I think there's another case of some dude in Japan who dided after he holed up in his room playing games, living on instant noodles.
Is carpal tunnel not related to typing the way global warming is not related to greenhouse gases? I'm skeptical.
dude, I agree.
I think, in microcosm, that a lot of this happens in the OSS world. There are too many leaders, too many forks, too many ideas about how to do similar things, and not enough consensus. It's kind of like a too much of a good thing happening, too many really smart people with wills determined to do things their own way. Or as you excellently put... too many predators.
Re: the other post, I agree. It doesn't predicate dictatorship, nor does it assert that the followers are dumb. However, I do agree with you about the evolution of the two social subspecies.
what I think is interesting though, is that with computing, the web, and this free-for-all information sharing, the followers are increasingly re-armed. Will, organization, and re-education are the limiting factors to revolution in that regard, I think. Just seeing the sheer amount of stuff on the web, I always amazed not by how many terrorist acts that are reported in the modern world, but how few.
It may be, that with this evolution of two social subspecies, the fight is being slowly "bred" out of the followers.
Good to see your religion-inspired nature is not wont to sarcasm or condescension. I went to Catholic School for eight years, was a choirboy, and had an uncle who was a Baptist minister. Because we had to support his growing church, there was a span of time during my childhood where I spent whole Sundays in church, treated to healthy dosings of both Catholic and Baptist dogma. It was like quiet calisthenics for an hour (Catholic Church), followed by like three hours of rigorous foot-stomping aerobics.
All of which is to say, my notion of religion is relatively mature. I perceive religions to be political institutions that predate the state and paved the way for the state to come into existence. Regardless of the foundations of faith that support a religion, it is still a political institution. And at the foundation of political institutions are laws that bind its citizens. These laws require no understanding, but they do demand adherence.
In other words, do this(tm) because I said so.
It was my mistake to bring up religion in the first place, and another to even respond to your post. What can I say though; those chimps got me beat!
I know you're joking, but Askenazi Jews have the highest mean IQs in the world, and they're pretty devout, which is how they maintain the supposed genetic component to their "intelligence" (they don't breed with outsiders). The regressiveness, perceived or real, in Americans goes a bit deeper than religion, I suspect.
dude, you police told my mom the same thing!
actually, the exact words were, "just don't hit him in the face."
Agreed. One might even argue that a vast majority of adults are conditioned to do the same.
Much of the success of our civilization has to do with the critical mass of the population following orders for their entire lives.
This is just me blowing smoke, but maybe the downside to state-of-nature fitness is that not enough followers survive to do the critical mass work of building a civilization. What's the cliche... too many cooks? The benefit of our civilization is that bulk population composed mostly of those who will follow instructions dutifully; this is the strength of humanity.
Right. Really good point.
I had a discussion with a friend of mine about religion. She was raised religious, and while an athiest now, she was happy to have been raised religiously. I asked why; she responded that the religious foundation answered questions she would have had (albeit falsely) about God, death, universe, etc. and thus eased her mind about them until she was mature enough to decide that it was mythology to her. In other words, she did exactly as you suggested, emulated a successful culture dynamic too complex for her to understand fully.
We all do it as humans. It's what religion is. Do this because I(tm) said so.
Good point.
Agreed. There are physical development issues too at that age. 3 and 4 year old humans are pretty much helpless, whereas similarly aged chimps can keep up with the pack and feed themselves and are physically prodigious in comparison. I saw some thing on young chimps, and they were given toys that similarly aged children would play with; and they tore the toys apart. Like pieces of brightly colored plastic everywhere.
I saw something recently about how chimps learn. The scientist made a point to note similarities and differences in human/chimp learning: chimp girls mature earlier than chimp boys by about two years: they learn quicker and are more astute in picking up chimp culture as relates to toolset, etc. The boys couldn't focus on a task and instead bothered everyone in the pack and exhibited what humans would term ADHD behavior, i.e. impulsive, short attention span behavior... roughing each other up, playfighting, etc. It was interesting. In this many think that chimps are similar to humans. What was different: chimps didn't teach their young. The scientist noted humans were unique in the fact that we taught our young. As far as the chimps were concerned, either you paid attention and picked up a skillset, or you were fucked.
Life is such an amazing dynamic thing man. I'm just humbled and in awe of the whole thing.
dude, that sick kid probably did your kid a favor. You know, boosting his immune system and all that... I think that's the point of this article....
Man, you're like, cranky, dude.
agreed.... so to the incidence of stomach cancer relative to those who've had ulcers. Ulcers are now known to be caused by h.pylori infections, which are notoriously difficult to eradicate.
... sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!!!!!
Seriously, back on topic: I'm ambivalent about manned space flight. Developing to accommodate man in space is a serious engineering hindrance, not to mention that there are serious medical issues that we've yet to address about man's ability to survive after prolonged space exposure. Then there are payload issues - too much weight for life support et al that we haven't been able to optimize yet. If you're talking manned space flight - it's really like 1969 all over again - we haven't developed much since then, other than to put a couple of exercise bikes in space and some MREs.
In other words, manned space travel have been poorly actualized. Whereas probe space exploration can move quickly and without new research, we have the tech, we have the means... and it can only get cheaper as soon as we can start mass producing them things and firing them off.
I guess I'm in favor of a dual-headed dragon approach. Full speed ahead on the probes - which only an entity like NASA could fund... and do research and develop manned flights. But both have to be done concurrently... not this one at the expense of the other bullshit we do now.
Launching satellites and junk can totally be privatized and it should be. It's just ferrying now; it's not like you've got to reinvent the wheel or anything.
Donnie Darko is the shit.
I'm a normal user. Not a tech... I run three windows boxes and a notebook on my home network. Three instances of XP pro and one instance of 200 pro.
I have auto-update active on all machines. i have antivirus, spyware, and adware programs running on all machines. None crash, none slow down, none are infected. And all of my machines were cheap. Dirt cheap.
I use firefox; I agree that internet explorer is a shitty browser.
The reason the average computer user doesn't switch off MS is because there is no reason to.
And for reference, all of my horrid computer experiences have been with Apple machines. I work in film, and the entire industry works off powerbooks. The last production company I freelanced for had huge problems with their Airport. Then three Powerbooks went down in the course of a month. Then a drive broke on a fourth powerbook. Ipods went dead, etc.
I find it interesting what Apple users are willing to put up with given the comparatively expensive hardware. At the same firm, they made fun of my Dell notebook and my HP pocket pc. But with a 1 gig sd card i had music and video for my pocket pc that synced seamlessly with my notebook (WMP 10), and my pocket PC was perfect for skyping/gaming/reading/PIMing with. I can imagine that my gadgets can do way more than comparable Apple products at a third of the total cost cost. And I was always working while their Powerbooks were on some UPS truck going to be serviced. In my book, I was the one who should have been doing the laughing.
All of which is to say, experiences are relative. I imagine that most users (myself included) don't switch from Windows machines because there is simply no need to. Wintel machines do what I need them to do at a cost I'm willing to pay.
Agreed about the gunfights. It's a very thorough and airtight film, from casting, writing, through to music and art direction.
Also an interesting example of a film that did poorly because of marketing.
I did listen to the commentary and it made that scene all the more hilarious. It was because it was so unexpected, yet in retrospect, the completely rational thing to do that made it such a great scene. She'd be scarred for life from that beating... therefore the boyfriend would be owned for the length of that relationship. Bananas.
Of course, Sarah Silverman's adlibs in the beginning. There's nothing hotter than a chick with a filthy mouth.
I agree with you totally. History has already proven with other devices.
You mention cars. It's the same with other forms. Radio, television, planes, etc.
Computing is awesome because it became ubiquitous before it became standardized. I'm not a historian, but I'm not sure if that's ever happened before. We're going through the standardization phase now.
One of the most persistent slashdot memes is the "in korea, only old people.... " and I think it's because younger people there consider email the equivalent of sitting down and writing a letter... in other words, antiquated. Even here on slashdot, fun is made of the ten people in the world who are still ham radio enthusiasts, etc.
Around the world, people routinely give up freedom for convenience. I don't think it will be different in this regard.
Dude, the way of the gun is such an underrated movie.
The woman was comedian Sarah Silverman. I think it was Ryan Phillipe who knocked her the fuck out. It was so fucking funny.
And I too remember every guy laughing out loud.
I'm not necessarily proposing that things go in the manner I described. It's just that I can imagine that the status quo is invested in it.
Re: network computing: I'm pretty certain we're heading that way. It's a bandwidth issue. Ultimately, we won't buy software at all. Very few companies will give us access to their code. This model, they would probably contend, would serve to drastically reduce piracy.
I think that several Asian markets will be interesting testbeds, as they've already built out the bandwidth necessary for a more centralized computing experience. That should be interesting.
Again, I'm not proposing it. I'm actually opposed to centralization in most forms. Centralization is de facto oppression. I'm not interested.
However, things like the Apple computing experience and ITunes are already paving the way. Plug and Play all the way. Don't worry about how your machine works - it just works. Seamless... negligible input from the end user. And we all applaud it.