Sorry, but the validity of your knee-jerk reaction is relevant only to the government's spying efforts. Which are not the subject of the article.
I have ATT DSL service. I have few objections to my service agreement. More importantly, I use my service to an extent not possible by those seduced by the promises of cable companies, whom I consider for the most part to be bottom of the barrel feeders. That's a roundabout way of saying that yes, the government may be spying on me, but I get to laugh doubly hard at the Comcastic jokes.
As for the article itself, you can argue whether such efforts are being made in good faith or whether they're a good idea generally, but it's entirely possible that for the likes of ATT, for example, trading off minimal (at present) consumer protections to prevent forced industry-wide regulation by the government could be viewed as a positive step.
So, yes, you can trust ATT. In the same way you can trust all large businesses. Trust in their self-interested motivations to find compromise and avoid bumping up against the self-interested choices or actions of consumers, or by the government who (hopefully) represents them.
I don't think this says as much about the users as it does the usability of our computers.
My opinion has always been that Windows has always aimed for the lowest common denominator when making assumptions about both its users and administrators. That, in turn, has fostered the culture where people have grown immune to dialogs of any sort while, at the same time, expecting that they'll be protected from Bad Things happening.
To be fair, though, the folks for whom dialogs are valuable or useful are completely novice computer users. Once they're past that stage, they quickly learn their computer considers them an idiot and the resentment starts.
Computers are commodity items now, the days where nerds interested in technical details were the primary demographic are long gone. People just want to do their job and move on with life, they don't care about memory registers or malware they just want to not be interrupted.
Ironic, isn't? One upon a time, many of us (myself included) yearned for the day when computers would be not only available for everyone, but easy to use. An important part of that easy to use goal was preventing the user from doing widespread damage and making sure the user was informed or otherwise reminded of everything that was happening as it happened. Now that those goals have been reached, users resent the favours being done on their behalf (even if those favours are good for them) to point of cynicism or outright hostility.
It really illustrates how dialog boxes as a warning system are a flawed mechanic, we got this fancy computer with a fancy operating system, why can't it figure out the right thing to do when an application tries to access memory it's not supposed to?
I suppose it's meant to be more informational than anything else.
Me, I prefer the command-line. Non-verbose, does what you tell it, and the results are assumed unless otherwise. Microsoft's shiny new command-line implementation Power Shell takes the opposite approach, one more in line with what happens on the desktop. The verbosity reaches levels associated with multiple-click throughs in a GUI, and while dialog boxes or prompts aren't part of the feature set (yet?), warning messages (in red, no less) are a common enough occurence. Again, this is indicative of an assumption that the user (administrator) is an idiot, and must be protected from him or herself.
It could be that users want to be idiots. Take, for example, a hypothetical scenario where some sort of "expert mode" existed where dialogs of any sort would never appear, the protections associated with them were removed, and all informational messages were sent to a log only. Would users resent being left on their own and grow cynical that their computer refused to try and help them?
If you have any appreciation for grand vistas, amazing landscapes, after one drive through the California Redwood Forests, I defy you to say: "California aint that beautiful anyway" ever again.
The problem is few, if any, live among the redwoods. And then, most Californians are living in the southern semi-arid part of California, mostly a pseudo-urban concrete sprawl bereft of the nature and scenery that someone living in downtown Chicago, for example, would for granted.
By comparison, you'd have more luck extolling the virtues of New Jersey (the Garden State). The "golden" in the Golden State mostly refers to the afternoon haze from smog and particulate matter.
Any responsible politician should be encouraging a home grown FOSS industry because it creates the basis for future jobs. Learning Windows is like learning to eat every meal at McDonalds.
An insightful comment if ever I read one.
I wonder, though, if we can extend the metaphor and conclude that the future IT professionals of Peru can now aspire to becoming the equivalent of drive-through-window order takers or, for the more highly skilled or experienced among them, certified fry cooks.
First, because few people read the article (especially when it's the size of a small novel), so making a hugely biased summary distorts the facts.
I think the term "bias" is a gross understatement.
Second, it's supposed to be a news site. Maybe CNN and Fox don't worry about showing their bias, but that doesn't make it right, and it'd be nice if there were slightly higher standards here.
Agreed, but I'll point out that the great unwashed masses prefer that their news is delivered alongside opinion. How else will they know what to think? Or be entertained enough to take notice and pay attention?
As for kdawson, I don't think he's try to accommodate that preference so much as conducting himself like a grade school kid who can't resist making a smart-assed comment at every turn even when it's inappropriate, unfunny, or long passed tiresome.
Every successful comic knows that someone has to tell the jokes, and someone has to be the straight man. Our man kdwason, however, seems intent on being both. Regrettably for us, he hasn't caught on that doing so ruins the joke.
My vote is that he gets off the stage and sits down in the audience with the rest of us and starts doing what most failed comedians do: heckle. Or better, yet, he should just take up blogging.
Even I have to admit that I'm baffled by how well younger people (teens or 20-somethings) can multitask through 8 different chat threads simultaneous. Yes, like many my age, I try to tell myself that they aren't able to think 'as deeply' in that experience, but in honesty that's a rationalization and they may simply be much better at that 'style' of comunication.
I think your rationalisation is fully justified and "multi-tasking", to the extent it doesn't relate to the differences between the sexes, is a fraud perpetuated by those who can't manage their time (or the time of others), and substitute superficial involvement with meaningful activity.
I'll stipulate that every successive generation may be slightly different than the last, but those differences are minor. And then, perceived abilities or gains in one area are typically offset by losses elsewhere. You think using a keyboard to type things in multiple program windows is a skill? Not unless you can do so in a coherent manner without spelling or grammar errors and multiple revisions that were unheard of in the days when people relied on typewriters.
Are the kids today more computer literate? Hardly. General computer literacy may be more widespread, but the younger crowd is transfixed by gadgets, and their knowledge is superficial when compared with that of folks in the industry I know ten or twenty years ago. A collection of trivia is nothing more than trivia, just as information (no matter how quickly you can click and point to obtain it) can never be synonymous with knowledge.
Can they walk and chew gum better than we did? I spent years listening to music while doing homework until I learned how that habit is, and always will be, a Really Stupid way to do anything.
Doing anything properly requires time, effort and concentration. Remove those elements, and you become the equivalent of the guy making the rounds at a party and not noticing that everyone having a real conversation has stepped outside, or left altogether.
As for those using email clients that require "checking for email" and do so at frequent intervals, I'd suggest they consider measuring their productivity using a different metric. If I tried justifying my salary by the rate at which inter-office memos were filed in my wastebasket (to use a historically quaint metaphor), I'd be laughed out the door.
Once you can read it, you find it valuable to not have to sift through mounds of useless or redundant information (like adjectives, verbs, etc.)
You're suggesting that the your local TV station's Doppler 2008 15-minute weather segment is too long?
Dunno about you, but here in Southern California, getting the highs, lows, barometric readings, precipitation levels, wind speeds, wind directions, relevant surf, snow, rain or wind advisories, sun rise, sun set and current phase of the moon for where I live (and the same for a dozen or so nearby communities) from a friendly weatherman or weatherwoman that takes the time to describe and explain the relevance of all that information (hopefully with live footage, pictures, charts or graphs), is the only way to know with quantifiable certainty that tommorow's weather will be just like just like yesterday's and the day before that.
Unless, of course, you choose to look out the window or step outside long enough to realise you've probably got better things to do.
As one who has lived thru more decades of automotive evolution than I care to reveal, let me say: hybrid cars are ugly. Appearance-wise, they're throwbacks to the sixties.
I can't decide whether you've lived through enough decades that your memory is failing, or your tastes changed dramatically over the years.
It was during the late '50s and '60s that some of the best looking cars were designed. That said, hybrids may be slightly unusual, but look no better or worse than most other cars designed using windtunnel engineering aesthetics.
0-20 is probably a more important figure for around town driving. 0-60 is what you need for merging from full stop onto the highway.
LOL. The expression "what you need" may be the automobile equivalent of a perfectly spherical frictionless object.
My experience driving the freeways of Southern California suggests there exists a widespread expectation that everyone already on the freeway and driving at full speed is expected to merge with you, irrespective of your speed.
It's not unlike the situation where improved handling characteristics on most all modern cars and trucks do little for those who are unable to learn to parallel park, or insist that right-angled turns are best made using the same turning diameter as that of a small ocean going vessel.
I'm afraid the OP was correct. You can't shed light on dark matter because the dark will suck all the light, just like the sun sucks dark so hard that the friction of the dark moving to the sun causes it to become very hot. The flow of dark towards the sun interrupted by the earth causes the side of the earth away from the sun to accumulate dark, thus causing Night. As the earth rotates the dark caught on the night side can then be pulled off, this causing the absence of dark known as Day.
What we call light bulbs are truly dark suckers as well. That is why light bulbs are hot, just like the sun. When a light bulb is full of dark and won't suck dark any more, it cools off. If you look in old light bulbs you can even seen the accumulation of dark.
And when he said shed some dark on the matter of light mass, shed some mass in order to become become light I think he was referring to the fact that dark is heavier than water (in the oceans, the deeper you go, the darker it gets).
I don't know about lighting dark sheds bit, though. Maybe someone else?
Sorry I have to beg to differ, The phrase is Glorified Traffic Warden.
So you're suggesting that no one should worry about Citizen Snoopers until someone in power (and unfamiliar with history) enacts a law requiring all transgressors to attend mandatory re-education camps?
Dear God, man! Have you ever been to Traffic School before? I have, and I can say that it's the social indoctrination equivalent of waterboarding, but the torture is spread out over a long number of hours, but with a coffee break in between where fellow inmates add their pain to yours.
it is said that over 50% of people eavesdropped on and informed on their neighbors to the communist government, and the paper-thin walls made it so that people had to constantly whisper for fear of being overheard.
My parents were from that generation. Despite the fact that they had moved to a new continent and that Tito was long dead, politics, even American politics, was always discussed in hushed tones. And then, never over the telephone.
what bugs me most is the sites that clone forum questions...
Well, to be fair, the contents of most mailing lists are archived by multiple sites, but that's as a service for those using The Google to find things. Web-only "forums", I guess may be a bit different.
My own approach has always been to subscribe to any list that interests me and keep my own archives. Searching is near instantaneous, I get to use regular expressions, and I don't need to open a browser window.
That said, I'll agree the redundancy is annoying. Most of my searches turn up page upon page of links to a copy of a manpage I already have and I've already read.
"All parts of the Internet are on the iPhone" could be construed to mean "The entire Internet is on the iPhone."
I mentioned to a friend recently that if I ever won the lottery, one of the first things I'd do is to buy usenet. He then asked me where I would keep it. I told him I didn't know, but an external USB drive might work, just in case I wanted to carry it around with me like on a trip or something.
I don't know how big usenet is, but I know it's a lot smaller than the internet, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't fit on an iPhone.
Come on slashdot, don't be twee, what Operating System does this 'computer virus' need to run on.. Systems Affected: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP...
You're being difficult. Anyone can see this is a cross-platform virus.
The Oort cloud could hold a planetary mass comet on a collision course with Earth and we would know about it only right before the event or just after.
It's probably a conspiracy to build A Really Big bypass.
Someone should go down to the local planning department to see if any demolition orders are on file.
I think this is the first time I've seen someone mention privoxy among the dozens of adblock posts.
I run privoxy on a separate machine so that it's available to every computer on my network, thereby minimising the need for installing Firefox extras. And while I'd recommend it highly (definitely a plus for over-burdened laptops when it's running elsewhere), it doesn't seem to the same job as adblock when it comes to an ad-free webpage. The Slashdot site, for example, renders with the right column being pushed down quite a distance leaving a gaping whitespace. It can be a tough choice sometimes: soul-sucking advertising, or existential emptiness.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't hide them from hookers, let them see the real damage that prostitution does to marriages and families of those who engage with prostitutes.
So for the kid's 18th birthday, you'll give him what?
A deck of cards?
AT&T cannot ever be trusted.
Sorry, but the validity of your knee-jerk reaction is relevant only to the government's spying efforts. Which are not the subject of the article.
I have ATT DSL service. I have few objections to my service agreement. More importantly, I use my service to an extent not possible by those seduced by the promises of cable companies, whom I consider for the most part to be bottom of the barrel feeders. That's a roundabout way of saying that yes, the government may be spying on me, but I get to laugh doubly hard at the Comcastic jokes.
As for the article itself, you can argue whether such efforts are being made in good faith or whether they're a good idea generally, but it's entirely possible that for the likes of ATT, for example, trading off minimal (at present) consumer protections to prevent forced industry-wide regulation by the government could be viewed as a positive step.
So, yes, you can trust ATT. In the same way you can trust all large businesses. Trust in their self-interested motivations to find compromise and avoid bumping up against the self-interested choices or actions of consumers, or by the government who (hopefully) represents them.
I think you meant Vista/Mohave Redux.
The mistake made in the summary indicates someone who knew the sound of the word, but not the spelling.
Allow me ...
I don't think this says as much about the users as it does the usability of our computers.
My opinion has always been that Windows has always aimed for the lowest common denominator when making assumptions about both its users and administrators. That, in turn, has fostered the culture where people have grown immune to dialogs of any sort while, at the same time, expecting that they'll be protected from Bad Things happening.
To be fair, though, the folks for whom dialogs are valuable or useful are completely novice computer users. Once they're past that stage, they quickly learn their computer considers them an idiot and the resentment starts.
Computers are commodity items now, the days where nerds interested in technical details were the primary demographic are long gone. People just want to do their job and move on with life, they don't care about memory registers or malware they just want to not be interrupted.
Ironic, isn't? One upon a time, many of us (myself included) yearned for the day when computers would be not only available for everyone, but easy to use. An important part of that easy to use goal was preventing the user from doing widespread damage and making sure the user was informed or otherwise reminded of everything that was happening as it happened. Now that those goals have been reached, users resent the favours being done on their behalf (even if those favours are good for them) to point of cynicism or outright hostility.
It really illustrates how dialog boxes as a warning system are a flawed mechanic, we got this fancy computer with a fancy operating system, why can't it figure out the right thing to do when an application tries to access memory it's not supposed to?
I suppose it's meant to be more informational than anything else.
Me, I prefer the command-line. Non-verbose, does what you tell it, and the results are assumed unless otherwise. Microsoft's shiny new command-line implementation Power Shell takes the opposite approach, one more in line with what happens on the desktop. The verbosity reaches levels associated with multiple-click throughs in a GUI, and while dialog boxes or prompts aren't part of the feature set (yet?), warning messages (in red, no less) are a common enough occurence. Again, this is indicative of an assumption that the user (administrator) is an idiot, and must be protected from him or herself.
It could be that users want to be idiots. Take, for example, a hypothetical scenario where some sort of "expert mode" existed where dialogs of any sort would never appear, the protections associated with them were removed, and all informational messages were sent to a log only. Would users resent being left on their own and grow cynical that their computer refused to try and help them?
If you have any appreciation for grand vistas, amazing landscapes, after one drive through the California Redwood Forests, I defy you to say: "California aint that beautiful anyway" ever again.
The problem is few, if any, live among the redwoods. And then, most Californians are living in the southern semi-arid part of California, mostly a pseudo-urban concrete sprawl bereft of the nature and scenery that someone living in downtown Chicago, for example, would for granted.
By comparison, you'd have more luck extolling the virtues of New Jersey (the Garden State). The "golden" in the Golden State mostly refers to the afternoon haze from smog and particulate matter.
If assuming 300 work days per employee, that would mean that the average employee creates 1.2 kB of data per second.
Top posting and absence of editing by Microsoft Outlook users engaged in a brief inter-departmental discussion could easily account for that volume.
Is that what you meant by "isn't user generated"?
Any responsible politician should be encouraging a home grown FOSS industry because it creates the basis for future jobs. Learning Windows is like learning to eat every meal at McDonalds.
An insightful comment if ever I read one.
I wonder, though, if we can extend the metaphor and conclude that the future IT professionals of Peru can now aspire to becoming the equivalent of drive-through-window order takers or, for the more highly skilled or experienced among them, certified fry cooks.
Or would that be too unfair? ;-)
Pornography has been around since the dawn of the internet
Either you phrased that badly, or you're thinking of VHS tapes.
Pornography (in the modern sense) was common enough in the Victorian era, and if I've done my math correctly, Al Gore hadn't yet been born.
First, because few people read the article (especially when it's the size of a small novel), so making a hugely biased summary distorts the facts.
I think the term "bias" is a gross understatement.
Second, it's supposed to be a news site. Maybe CNN and Fox don't worry about showing their bias, but that doesn't make it right, and it'd be nice if there were slightly higher standards here.
Agreed, but I'll point out that the great unwashed masses prefer that their news is delivered alongside opinion. How else will they know what to think? Or be entertained enough to take notice and pay attention?
As for kdawson, I don't think he's try to accommodate that preference so much as conducting himself like a grade school kid who can't resist making a smart-assed comment at every turn even when it's inappropriate, unfunny, or long passed tiresome.
Every successful comic knows that someone has to tell the jokes, and someone has to be the straight man. Our man kdwason, however, seems intent on being both. Regrettably for us, he hasn't caught on that doing so ruins the joke.
My vote is that he gets off the stage and sits down in the audience with the rest of us and starts doing what most failed comedians do: heckle. Or better, yet, he should just take up blogging.
Even I have to admit that I'm baffled by how well younger people (teens or 20-somethings) can multitask through 8 different chat threads simultaneous. Yes, like many my age, I try to tell myself that they aren't able to think 'as deeply' in that experience, but in honesty that's a rationalization and they may simply be much better at that 'style' of comunication.
I think your rationalisation is fully justified and "multi-tasking", to the extent it doesn't relate to the differences between the sexes, is a fraud perpetuated by those who can't manage their time (or the time of others), and substitute superficial involvement with meaningful activity.
I'll stipulate that every successive generation may be slightly different than the last, but those differences are minor. And then, perceived abilities or gains in one area are typically offset by losses elsewhere. You think using a keyboard to type things in multiple program windows is a skill? Not unless you can do so in a coherent manner without spelling or grammar errors and multiple revisions that were unheard of in the days when people relied on typewriters.
Are the kids today more computer literate? Hardly. General computer literacy may be more widespread, but the younger crowd is transfixed by gadgets, and their knowledge is superficial when compared with that of folks in the industry I know ten or twenty years ago. A collection of trivia is nothing more than trivia, just as information (no matter how quickly you can click and point to obtain it) can never be synonymous with knowledge.
Can they walk and chew gum better than we did? I spent years listening to music while doing homework until I learned how that habit is, and always will be, a Really Stupid way to do anything.
Doing anything properly requires time, effort and concentration. Remove those elements, and you become the equivalent of the guy making the rounds at a party and not noticing that everyone having a real conversation has stepped outside, or left altogether.
As for those using email clients that require "checking for email" and do so at frequent intervals, I'd suggest they consider measuring their productivity using a different metric. If I tried justifying my salary by the rate at which inter-office memos were filed in my wastebasket (to use a historically quaint metaphor), I'd be laughed out the door.
It's the world of computers with their binary-derived values that are wrong.
There. Fi-fixed that for you.
Be sure to tell your computer that a decision has been made.
Once you can read it, you find it valuable to not have to sift through mounds of useless or redundant information (like adjectives, verbs, etc.)
You're suggesting that the your local TV station's Doppler 2008 15-minute weather segment is too long?
Dunno about you, but here in Southern California, getting the highs, lows, barometric readings, precipitation levels, wind speeds, wind directions, relevant surf, snow, rain or wind advisories, sun rise, sun set and current phase of the moon for where I live (and the same for a dozen or so nearby communities) from a friendly weatherman or weatherwoman that takes the time to describe and explain the relevance of all that information (hopefully with live footage, pictures, charts or graphs), is the only way to know with quantifiable certainty that tommorow's weather will be just like just like yesterday's and the day before that.
Unless, of course, you choose to look out the window or step outside long enough to realise you've probably got better things to do.
As one who has lived thru more decades of automotive evolution than I care to reveal, let me say: hybrid cars are ugly. Appearance-wise, they're throwbacks to the sixties.
I can't decide whether you've lived through enough decades that your memory is failing, or your tastes changed dramatically over the years.
It was during the late '50s and '60s that some of the best looking cars were designed. That said, hybrids may be slightly unusual, but look no better or worse than most other cars designed using windtunnel engineering aesthetics.
0-20 is probably a more important figure for around town driving. 0-60 is what you need for merging from full stop onto the highway.
LOL. The expression "what you need" may be the automobile equivalent of a perfectly spherical frictionless object.
My experience driving the freeways of Southern California suggests there exists a widespread expectation that everyone already on the freeway and driving at full speed is expected to merge with you, irrespective of your speed.
It's not unlike the situation where improved handling characteristics on most all modern cars and trucks do little for those who are unable to learn to parallel park, or insist that right-angled turns are best made using the same turning diameter as that of a small ocean going vessel.
Not only did loads of Windows users run the damn thing, but we got loads of helpdesk tickets from Mac users asking for a Mac version.
That has got to be the most depressing thing I've read in some time. There really is no hope for the great unwashed masses, is there?
I've always heard the opposite
I'm afraid the OP was correct. You can't shed light on dark matter because the dark will suck all the light, just like the sun sucks dark so hard that the friction of the dark moving to the sun causes it to become very hot. The flow of dark towards the sun interrupted by the earth causes the side of the earth away from the sun to accumulate dark, thus causing Night. As the earth rotates the dark caught on the night side can then be pulled off, this causing the absence of dark known as Day.
What we call light bulbs are truly dark suckers as well. That is why light bulbs are hot, just like the sun. When a light bulb is full of dark and won't suck dark any more, it cools off. If you look in old light bulbs you can even seen the accumulation of dark.
And when he said shed some dark on the matter of light mass, shed some mass in order to become become light I think he was referring to the fact that dark is heavier than water (in the oceans, the deeper you go, the darker it gets).
I don't know about lighting dark sheds bit, though. Maybe someone else?
Sorry I have to beg to differ, The phrase is Glorified Traffic Warden.
So you're suggesting that no one should worry about Citizen Snoopers until someone in power (and unfamiliar with history) enacts a law requiring all transgressors to attend mandatory re-education camps?
Dear God, man! Have you ever been to Traffic School before? I have, and I can say that it's the social indoctrination equivalent of waterboarding, but the torture is spread out over a long number of hours, but with a coffee break in between where fellow inmates add their pain to yours.
Besides, it seems traffic wardens can cause a lot trouble. [1]
-------
1. Apologies if it's the wrong scene.
it is said that over 50% of people eavesdropped on and informed on their neighbors to the communist government, and the paper-thin walls made it so that people had to constantly whisper for fear of being overheard.
My parents were from that generation. Despite the fact that they had moved to a new continent and that Tito was long dead, politics, even American politics, was always discussed in hushed tones. And then, never over the telephone.
what bugs me most is the sites that clone forum questions ...
Well, to be fair, the contents of most mailing lists are archived by multiple sites, but that's as a service for those using The Google to find things. Web-only "forums", I guess may be a bit different.
My own approach has always been to subscribe to any list that interests me and keep my own archives. Searching is near instantaneous, I get to use regular expressions, and I don't need to open a browser window.
That said, I'll agree the redundancy is annoying. Most of my searches turn up page upon page of links to a copy of a manpage I already have and I've already read.
"All parts of the Internet are on the iPhone" could be construed to mean "The entire Internet is on the iPhone."
I mentioned to a friend recently that if I ever won the lottery, one of the first things I'd do is to buy usenet. He then asked me where I would keep it. I told him I didn't know, but an external USB drive might work, just in case I wanted to carry it around with me like on a trip or something.
I don't know how big usenet is, but I know it's a lot smaller than the internet, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't fit on an iPhone.
Yeah right after I get out of the bath.
Remember to put on a bathrobe.
Come on slashdot, don't be twee, what Operating System does this 'computer virus' need to run on .. Systems Affected: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP ...
You're being difficult. Anyone can see this is a cross-platform virus.
The Oort cloud could hold a planetary mass comet on a collision course with Earth and we would know about it only right before the event or just after.
It's probably a conspiracy to build A Really Big bypass.
Someone should go down to the local planning department to see if any demolition orders are on file.
I think this is the first time I've seen someone mention privoxy among the dozens of adblock posts.
I run privoxy on a separate machine so that it's available to every computer on my network, thereby minimising the need for installing Firefox extras. And while I'd recommend it highly (definitely a plus for over-burdened laptops when it's running elsewhere), it doesn't seem to the same job as adblock when it comes to an ad-free webpage. The Slashdot site, for example, renders with the right column being pushed down quite a distance leaving a gaping whitespace. It can be a tough choice sometimes: soul-sucking advertising, or existential emptiness.