"Support the troops" is vitally important because not everybody does, and we need to be mindful of that fact.
[...]
There is no such debate. Seriously: there is no such debate.
LOL.. I almost made a serious reply to your posts, before I caught on. Thanks for the laugh!
"vitally important".. heh -- you got that straight from a Bush press conference, right?
And then of course the self-contradiction. First not everybody is supporting the troops (whatever that might mean to you), but then there is no debate. Fabulous!
My only question is: is this a little comedy routine of yours, or are you hoping to get a job in the Bush administration?
Cheers,
-jason
Re:Cool video - Japanese National Yo-Yo Contest
on
Extreme Yo-Yoing
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· Score: 1
Thanks for posting this.. before watching it I was laughing at the sheer pure nerdiness of yo-yo play, but now I'm impressed.
Some of the tricks those guys were doing are amazing.. plus they look like stuff I would have been mezmerized by years ago at raves.
Finally, maybe now us Amiga users can start to get more respect than the OS/2, Plan9, DR-DOS, CP/M, A/UX, Desqview, Xenix, OS9 (Not MacOS 9, that 6809 based OS that the Radio Shack Coco series ran), and GEM users have gotten. >:)
You left out GEOS, you insensitive clod!;-)
Actually, I still rather miss DR-DOS 6 (and its successor, Novell-DOS 7), with DESQview or DESQview/X running on top. And XTGold for file management, of course. =)
The iPod, like most things, is not priced based on it's use or exchange value, just it's sign exchange value.
[...]
So the ones who may not "get it", are not missing anything: what they don't "get" is absolutely nosense, and that's alright.
I agree with you, but I think you're missing an important point: there really are social benefits to using or possessing objects with a high sign value, even if they have no other good points.
Just as an example: try introducing yourself in a nightclub wearing, say, Polo, and then try again wearing, say, D&G or Diesel. You'll have more success the second time. Is it because the clothing is better made? Or even because it costs more? Nope. (Diesel is only a bit more expensive than Polo anyway.)
It's because you're in effect saying "I believe in a certain set of values, a certain aesthetic". It doesn't particularly matter what that aesthetic is; it's all about shared values.
Being willing to expend the time, effort and/or money to "seem" cool is to "be" cool, to most people.
Ok, so -- as you point out -- to some people, including us "engineer types", this is nonsense. And at some level almost everybody actually understands this. But it's worth it to most people to uphold the system of shared deception or pretension, because they can benefit from it.
See? Diesel clothing has "cool" value because *other people are willing to pretend it does*.
In other crowds it's different signifiers, but with the same result. Here it might be having installed Gentoo from stage 1, say..
My point, if I have one, is that the whole charade is shallow, I suppose, but in a different way than most people think..
I look at it this way - if a requirement is really silly, then it should be easy to talk just about any user out of it. At the end you come out with a much healthier relationship between you and the client.
I so wish this was true. I'm a classic techie type in mentality, where I really expect clear reasoning and truthful, straightforward explanations to have some effect on people's opinions. Unfortunately, real-world experience has shown again and again (and again..) that this is not the case outside of tech-land. (And even there it can be iffy, like if you're dealing with a zealot.)
Customers will give contradictory requirements on different days, double your workload with a whimsical "requirement" that they'll forget about in a week, take constructive advice as criticism of everything they and their product stand for, etc. Why? Because they're people, and people can be that way, especially when they're dealing with things they don't quite understand. I know a lot of women who are automatically suspicious of anything an automotive repair person tells them.. and I suspect that a lot of the interactions I've had with customers are the result of some similar feelings.
I'm professional enough that I (almost) always try to assist my customers as best I can, even if they've pissed me off (or vice-versa). I'd like to see my customers succeed. And sometimes, although it may sound wrong, "losing" a requirement or two is actually a better way to help them succeed than either (1) slavishly implementing every stupid idea they have, or (2) talking them out of each stupid idea.
My experience is that selectively second-guessing a customer, if done thoughtfully and with good intentions, will also generally result in better relations with them than arguing each poorly-designed requirement with them will.
And then -- if they do bring it up again, well, then you know it really is important to them, and then you can slavishly implement/argue the merits with them.
Albeit a great idea, in the end this would actually hurt the/.'s of the world because advertisers would find that their advertising dollars are less and less effective, pulling their budgets.
Yeah, that's definitely a downside to it. If everyone used it, it would self-defeat. But, given the marketshare of moz/firefox combined, and the even smaller number of people who go to mozdev and install any plugins, I don't imagine it would be much of an issue, at least not right away.
When you want to buy something, say a w00t shirt from thinkgeek, instead of going straight to thinkgeek, if the user had a small search application that would instantly pull up the thinkgeek banner ad from one of their favorite publishing sites and auto-clicked on it, both the click AND the sale would be attributed to/.
Yeah, I really like that idea too. Basically anytime I purchased something from amazon or thinkgeek, or whatever, I could credit one of my favorite sites. On the other hand, I don't know of a way to actually implement this..
That would be a nice technology to add to Mozilla 1.x where it automatically hides the advertisement and treats it like a click through where advertisers get tired of paying out.
Actually, I've seriously considered writing a plugin along those lines.
My idea is more of a "reward" thing.. basically, I don't particularly want to be bothered by ads, but it would be nice if I could click on a toolbar button called something like "reward 'em" and moz would do a virtual click on every ad on the page, but loading the results into a hidden window (or, in other words, retrieve the content but never display it). Maybe moz could even do it automatically (optionally of course).. I have a fast connection and mostly wouldn't even notice the difference.
That way I can help ensure that my favorite sites have a revenue stream.. think of it as a guerilla micro-payment scheme.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL .. I almost made a serious reply to your posts, before I caught on. Thanks for the laugh!
"vitally important" .. heh -- you got that straight from a Bush press conference, right?
"not everybody does" -- completely non-sequitor. classic style there.
And then of course the self-contradiction. First not everybody is supporting the troops (whatever that might mean to you), but then there is no debate. Fabulous!
My only question is: is this a little comedy routine of yours, or are you hoping to get a job in the Bush administration?
Cheers,
-jason
Thanks for posting this .. before watching it I was laughing at the sheer pure nerdiness of yo-yo play, but now I'm impressed.
.. plus they look like stuff I would have been mezmerized by years ago at raves.
Some of the tricks those guys were doing are amazing
Very cool. =)
You left out GEOS, you insensitive clod! ;-)
Actually, I still rather miss DR-DOS 6 (and its successor, Novell-DOS 7), with DESQview or DESQview/X running on top. And XTGold for file management, of course. =)
Oh, yeah, that's *totally* different from everyday reality. Oh, wait .. no it's not. doh!
So I guess the reality shows *are* realistic after all..
I agree with you, but I think you're missing an important point: there really are social benefits to using or possessing objects with a high sign value, even if they have no other good points.
Just as an example: try introducing yourself in a nightclub wearing, say, Polo, and then try again wearing, say, D&G or Diesel. You'll have more success the second time. Is it because the clothing is better made? Or even because it costs more? Nope. (Diesel is only a bit more expensive than Polo anyway.)
It's because you're in effect saying "I believe in a certain set of values, a certain aesthetic". It doesn't particularly matter what that aesthetic is; it's all about shared values.
Being willing to expend the time, effort and/or money to "seem" cool is to "be" cool, to most people.
Ok, so -- as you point out -- to some people, including us "engineer types", this is nonsense. And at some level almost everybody actually understands this. But it's worth it to most people to uphold the system of shared deception or pretension, because they can benefit from it.
See? Diesel clothing has "cool" value because *other people are willing to pretend it does*.
In other crowds it's different signifiers, but with the same result. Here it might be having installed Gentoo from stage 1, say..
My point, if I have one, is that the whole charade is shallow, I suppose, but in a different way than most people think..
Enjoy.
I so wish this was true. I'm a classic techie type in mentality, where I really expect clear reasoning and truthful, straightforward explanations to have some effect on people's opinions. Unfortunately, real-world experience has shown again and again (and again..) that this is not the case outside of tech-land. (And even there it can be iffy, like if you're dealing with a zealot.)
Customers will give contradictory requirements on different days, double your workload with a whimsical "requirement" that they'll forget about in a week, take constructive advice as criticism of everything they and their product stand for, etc. Why? Because they're people, and people can be that way, especially when they're dealing with things they don't quite understand. I know a lot of women who are automatically suspicious of anything an automotive repair person tells them .. and I suspect that a lot of the interactions I've had with customers are the result of some similar feelings.
I'm professional enough that I (almost) always try to assist my customers as best I can, even if they've pissed me off (or vice-versa). I'd like to see my customers succeed. And sometimes, although it may sound wrong, "losing" a requirement or two is actually a better way to help them succeed than either (1) slavishly implementing every stupid idea they have, or (2) talking them out of each stupid idea.
My experience is that selectively second-guessing a customer, if done thoughtfully and with good intentions, will also generally result in better relations with them than arguing each poorly-designed requirement with them will.
And then -- if they do bring it up again, well, then you know it really is important to them, and then you can slavishly implement/argue the merits with them.
Yeah, that's definitely a downside to it. If everyone used it, it would self-defeat. But, given the marketshare of moz/firefox combined, and the even smaller number of people who go to mozdev and install any plugins, I don't imagine it would be much of an issue, at least not right away.
Yeah, I really like that idea too. Basically anytime I purchased something from amazon or thinkgeek, or whatever, I could credit one of my favorite sites. On the other hand, I don't know of a way to actually implement this ..
Actually, I've seriously considered writing a plugin along those lines.
My idea is more of a "reward" thing .. basically, I don't particularly want to be bothered by ads, but it would be nice if I could click on a toolbar button called something like "reward 'em" and moz would do a virtual click on every ad on the page, but loading the results into a hidden window (or, in other words, retrieve the content but never display it). Maybe moz could even do it automatically (optionally of course) .. I have a fast connection and mostly wouldn't even notice the difference.
That way I can help ensure that my favorite sites have a revenue stream .. think of it as a guerilla micro-payment scheme.
I can't believe you missed bat.mobile.